Thursday, August 21, 2014

You know it’s probably gonna be a hot day when it’s 73ºF when you get up in the morning.

Temperatures are predicted in the 90s for the next 7 days.  Perhaps the heat will hasten the maturity of the crop… it sure seems delayed right now because of the weeks of pleasant, cool days we’ve had in July and August.

The informational meeting last night in Huntingburg, Indiana was helpful.  State officials of the FSA explained the nuts and bolts of the way the 2014 Farm Bill will affect us.  Then, Chris Hurt, a Purdue Ag Economist, connected some real-world grain market principles to the newly-designed system.  He really did simplify the understanding of a complex program.  I drove home more confident that we will be able to productively navigate our way through the bureaucratic layers of decision-making.  Thanks, Dr. Hurt.

I’m starting today the process of reviewing our historical yields with the goal of updating them, and studying how to reallocate ‘base acres’.  All this information will have to be verified with the local FSA.  It’ll take a few trips there to get the information correct, and could be a months-long process.  FSA has yet to define many of the parameters they will capture, including the ‘how’ of yield updates.  The projected enrollment for the 2014 program will likely occur in early 2015!   Think about that!

John and Brandon are working on the last of our 4 semi trailers… the water trailer that supports the sprayer has now been stored for fall harvest, and a hopper-bottom trailer connected to the red-stripe Mack truck.  John has apparently decided that spraying is over until the post-harvest applications!

The old Chamberlain hopper trailer is now connected to Red Stripe. Now all 4 of our semis are ready to bring in the fall harvest.

I also received in yesterday’s mail the Form 11’s from the County Assessor.  These show the increases to our assessment levels for each parcel of land we own.  The stack is about the size of the old Sears catalog we used to get in the mail.  Each one will be entered into a proprietary spreadsheet here, so that accurate year-to-year comparisons can be specifically quantified for the assessed value (AV). The actual bills for the 2014-pay-2015 property taxes will arrive next spring. The AV has increased dramatically each of the past 4  years, increasing our property tax bill by 33.5% in that time period.

Here, part of the Form 11 papers report the new assessment levels, and will be entered into the spreadsheet.

Good thing I like office work, don’tcha think?  Really, it’s not a bad duty when the days are 90+ outside!