Monday, November 7, 2016

The weather is sunny and beautiful.  It is 72ºF, and not a cloud in the sky.  You could not ask for a better fall day.  It seems more like late September, not early November.  By the way, that’s not a complaint!

So, what am I doing on this beautiful day?  I’m in the office, looking out at it.  I’m crunching numbers today, helping plan for our end of the fiscal year.

The property taxes are due on Thursday, too, and I have prepared those documents for placing in the mail on that day.  I used to go to the County Treasurer’s office and wait in the long line to get those paid, but now I mail them.  We are hopeful that the assessed value of farmland will decline next year, lowering our tax bill.  The Indiana legislature in 2016 passed a new formula for calculating farm land values.  It should reduce our property tax bill next year, but we are uncertain about the amount.

It is becoming easy to pick out the strips where Larry planted wheat during late September early October.  (see post for September 28) We strategically place these strips in valleys across our hilly fields, in order to reduce water erosion during the winter.  We experimented with this technique last fall, and we had mostly positive results.  The cold, wet spring made some of the strips hard to stop before planting the 2016 crops.  We are hopeful that this management item will improve our efforts at soil conservation.  It is a nod to the growing importance of cover crops in Indiana.  In total, these strips amount to about 100 acres across our fields.

Can you spot the conservation strip of wheat snaking its way up the hill toward our neighbor’s house?

Have a good week.