Monday, November 5, 2012

Pretty cold out there this morning.  30F when I came to the office.

We had a good celebration for Pat’s birthday yesterday, with a great dinner at Biaggi’s restaurant in Evansville.  Philip, John, Ashley, and Ella were able to join Pat and me there.

Today, I’m paying bills, and writing the monthly paychecks.  Also, on my plate today is to report the planted wheat acres at FSA.   Among those activities, I will also be fine-tuning our cash flow, crop budgets, and crop plan for 2013.  This is in preparation to go to a farm land auction on Wednesday morning.  We have been working with our banker at Old National, and another banker who desires our business, for many weeks now to be ready to bid on November 7.  The bank approvals have been made, and we are looking forward to the auction.  The place we are considering is a little over 215 acres with about 200 tillable.  Who knows where the bidding will end… we have defined our limit, and hopefully the bidding will stop under that number!  If the bidding goes beyond the number we have defined for ourselves, we will congratulate the new owner.  We really desire to add those acres to the farm.  But the farmland sales prices have been very strong for a couple years, and there is no indication of that softening just yet.

John has all the fall spraying caught up; he discovered some very favorable low-wind days last week that allowed him to complete that task.

We still need to finish off the harvest of the double-crop soybeans, and I’m going to go inspect those fields today.  The frosty mornings may have stopped the growing process, and I’m hoping the combines can roll the end of the week or early next week.