Saturday, May 9, 2015

Soybean planting is on pause today, because of a little rain yesterday evening and this morning.   It has been amazing how quickly we went from too wet to too dry.  It was getting quite dry, and the rain will make almost certain that the soybeans I’ve been planting for a couple days will be able to sprout.  Beginning yesterday, I began to put the bean seed deeper into the soil, trying to make sure they were lying in moisture.  In fact, this was a setting 1/2 hole deeper than I’ve ever used to plant soybeans.  When I return to planting, I can ‘shallow’ them up again.

I took the opportunity this morning to drive by the first-planted  (April 29) soybean field.  Those beans are emerging from the soil, in a rather uniform way.  It’s always a great day when a farmer sees the crop he’s planted come through the soil!

Watch those soybeans pop through to the warm sunshine!

We can also see the little corn plants coming through from that first day, too.  Looking pretty good today.

Here comes the corn… planted 4/29

If no more rain comes, I’ll probably spend Mothers’ Day in the field, but if it rains a bit more, I’ll get to spend it with family, not my John Deere!

We survived the big drill problem of Monday evening.  It took all of Tuesday and Wednesday to put the thing back in working order.  That work was exhausting.  But Thursday and Friday were terrific planting days.  We will need about 5-7 more working days to get the soybeans planted… we’re over halfway there.

Happy Mothers’ Day.  Of course, this day brings back sweet memories of our dear mom, Ruth Byrd Carnahan.  She was something quite special…and we appreciate her more and more as the years go by…