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Life on the Farm
chamookman:
Everything is looking good BJ! (=) Bob.
Pappy:
Looking good BJ, we had hail with the storms that moved through Tuesday and Wednesday that took out a lot of early gardens and some wheat crops. Sad but nature don't always do what we want it to. :) I suspect most of the farmers had insurance, as for the gardens, they will just have to start over.
Pappy
bjrogg:
Thanks Pappy. We generally don’t get hail insurance on all our crops. Most of them will grow out of the damage depending upon what growth stage they are in. The most damaging timing is when certain crops are mature. Ripe wheat, soybeans and edible beans can literally be trashed in the field losing much of the grain we hope to harvest.
I don’t think I have had as busy of a week as Pappy, but it was probably close.
I finished up planting my son’s corn. Then I put the second application of fertilizer on our wheat. We can get higher yield with less fertilizer if we split the application. We apply a little over half of it early and then we apply the second application just before the flag leaf comes out.
While I was working at that my brother and nephew switched planter to soybeans and got started planting them.
When I finished the wheat I traded My nephew off in the planter. Most of our soybeans are planted on headlands(the ends of the field where we turn around) and wedge rows. It’s a bit of a hassle planting, taking care of and harvesting them, but much easier than harvesting sugar beets from them in the fall. My nephew had planted the actual fields but I needed to plant the areas of the beet fields because I knew where the beets where and where the soybeans had to be planted.
The beets we planted last were up nice.
Bjrogg
bjrogg:
Then I put fertilizer on the sugar beets that didn’t get biosolids over the winter. Again I split this application. I put a little more than half on now and I will come back again and put the rest on soon. Sugar beets need their fertilizer early so they grow tons. The object is to grow tons by mid August. We don’t want to over fertilize. We want them to use up their fertilizer by mid August and then start to put their efforts into making sugar. If they have too much fertilizer left they will continue to grow tons and not concentrate on making sugar.
After I finished that I washed the sprayer. The fertilizer is very hard on steel and I want to wash it off as soon as I can.
Then I switched nozzles. The rye cover crop that we tilled and planted sugar beets into has done its job. Now it is like a weed and it’s time to terminate it. I really love that we can plant into this rye . I think large sections of our fields would have been blown off by the wind if we were still planting into plowed ground. This is a case where old and new ways work so well together.
Here’s the sugar beet field and the rye that needs to be terminated. It will still provide great wind and soil erosion protection after it’s terminated .
Bjrogg
bjrogg:
The timing was perfect. I finished up my work just before dark Friday night and by Saturday morning it was raining. Not hard but a nice although cool rain. That will really help to make the fertilizer I applied available to the crops and the rye won’t completely get away on us now.
Also it gave me a chance to relax just a little before our big night out.
My wife, son and a bunch of friends went to a concert at our local movie theater. It’s the second we’ve been to and really enjoyed both. They have been doing about six concerts a year. Trying to keep the doors open on our old Community House Theater.
This time it was a Bob Seger cover band named Kat Mandu. Had a really good time. Totally worth the $35 ticket
Bjrogg
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