Under the watchful eyes of their teachers, students drilled dozens of screws into metal frame after metal frame Wednesday morning at Ness City High School as they began a project that will provide vacation housing in Colorado and experience that will last the students a lifetime.

While 6A and 5A schools like Hutchinson and McPherson take on large building projects and complete an entire house over the school year, that’s not feasible for smaller schools like Ness City.

Instead, these mostly 3A, 2A and 1A schools are taking on a 3-1A-sized building project — tiny houses.

(Read more: Local – The Hutchinson News)

Father and son Ryan and Eugene Goering of Moundridge grow corn, soy and wheat. In the past, this team tried a variety of ways to save on output and to grow smarter. They used a few probes to decide how dry the soil was, and they used an app to determine their crop output by location.

But they knew they had more to learn. Last year, when they heard about the Kansas Water Office’s Water Technology Farm program, they applied.

With the help of KWO, manufacturers, the Kansas Corn Commission and Kansas State University, the Goerings restructured their pivot system, making half of the seven towers a control unit and reframing the other half with a variety of nozzles. The pivots were fitted with different output nozzles, in a variety of configurations and lengths of tube. Some were orange, others blue, and several were black — but most importantly, they ranged in height and output. The Goerings also decreased the amount of water per pass and lowered the water pressure from 20 pounds to 6 pounds.

(Read more: Local – The Hutchinson News)