Thursday, June 16, 2016

Yesterday, after touring the fields planted on June 6 & 7, we determined that most were good, but we do need to replant some acres at Freddie and Huey.  What we thought might happen, did happen.  Some areas of those fields dried out too rapidly after planting, leaving the many soybean seeds sprouted but in the dry soil.  There just was not enough of a ‘stand’.  So, we gathered some seed from our Asgrow dealer, and set about replanting.  I worked the afternoon at Freddie, and the soybeans were going in quite nicely… after the .4″ (10mm) rain on Tuesday.  As I was folding the drill to leave the field, you could see the skies darken and threaten a storm.  Sure enough, before I was a quarter-mile up the road, the “wall of rainwater” hit, with very gusty winds.  Driving along that county road, it was sometimes hard to see where I was going!  It was pounding rain, and according to Climate.com, we received about .6″ (15mm) in that event.  That should be just enough to make this replant thrive.  After this rain event dries sufficiently, I’ll have just a few more acres to replant at Huey.  That should end the long, drawn-out spring 2016 planting season!

Just as I was folded up and ready to leave the field at Freddie, I stepped out of the JD 9330 tractor and snapped this panorama of the approaching storm…

Today, I spent the morning cutting up and removing tree limbs that came down during yesterday evening’s storm.  The damage was not too bad, just hot and humid to do the clean-up.

John has been doing a bit of post-spraying on the soybeans in various locations.  He worked on the fields near the town of Wheatland yesterday.   It was a good time to work in those particular fields, because the wind was quite low, eliminating any danger of the spray material drifting off-target.

We have also finally been able to get the contractor into the field at Nellie to do the repair to the levee there.  We are on the outside of the curve of White River in that location, so the bank erosion eventually cuts into the levee, and it has to be moved back away from the river.  We started this process in October, with the request to Indiana DNR for the repair permit.  That came in April, and the contractor was finally able to get in there this week.  This repair should buy us several more years of flood protection.

Rebuilding our levee along White River.   The dozer is working from the ‘river side’ of the levee.  This picture is from Monday, June 13.

Working from the ‘field side’ of the levee.

We always seem to have a project that needs attention!