September 28, 2012

It’s another gray, overcast, damp-feeling morning.  October is right around the corner.  This last rain event is holding us out of the harvest fields.  We could be gathering in corn, but the soil is too soft to support the combines and trucks (especially trucks) just yet.  If we were to go to the corn field today, the machines’ tires would make deep ruts in the soft ground, and create damage to the soil structure.  Such damage takes mother nature 3-5 years to repair.  It is not yet urgent enough for us to proceed in that manner.  The Weather Channel website predicts 10 days of sunshine, beginning this afternoon.  During this rainy spell, we are also detecting a slight improvement in the maturity of the remaining soybeans.  It is our hope and plan, that when the corn is completely finished, we can return to finish off the rest of the acres of non-DCB beans.  The DCB’s will be ready approximately the 2nd or 3rd week of October.

I hope this next window of opportunity allows Larry Corn to return to the farm for wheat planting.  Larry began to work for Dad when he was 15, and that was 45 years ago!  He is employed at the hospital at Jasper, Indiana, but he takes vacation days every fall to come to help us.  He’s like a member of the family.  He has planted our wheat crop for more years than I can remember.  We have pictures in the office of Larry in a JD 4430 tractor pulling a small 12-foot disk and wheat drill.  We now plant wheat by blending it in with the granular fertilizer, and it is spread  as the operator from Crop Production Services makes the application.  Larry then runs a disk and Unverferth roller (very shallow, 2-3 inches) immediately behind the fertilzer/seed mixture application to incorporate it into the soil.  This method is faster, more efficient, and has worked well for us for many years.