Friday, May 5, 2017
Since last Saturday, we’ve received 6 .5 inches (165mm) of rain. It is safe to say the drought is over! Before this rainy week, yes it was getting a little dry. But those concerns have been replaced with #replant17 planning.
Office work is going on today in preparation for the spring installment of the property taxes. There is some relief there this year, as the Governor and Legislature last year enacted a law to speed the process by which the assessment of farmland valuations follow the values. The lag of the valuation used to be about 4 years, which is more pleasant when land values are increasing (as they did 09-15). But the lag was particularly troubling now that farm incomes and land values are declining. We were hopeful when this new law was enacted, (with unanimous support in the legislature), but we were uncertain how it would actually play out in the real world. After tallying the bills into a spreadsheet (an annual task), we had the pleasant revelation that the final bill was 4.12% less than the same period last year! Thank you, to Indiana’s former Governor Pence and the Legislature.
The other task is to prepare our Crop Production Services (CPS) bill. I must match the invoices to the stack of pink and yellow papers that we receive with each load of fertilizer or chemicals. Then, the allocation of prepaid and new purchase items must be matched. Sometimes, there are returns, and those have to matched to the prepay account or new purchase, too. It only took two calls today to Melissa at CPS, to get it worked out. The process is a bit complicated, but Melissa is very methodical and thorough. After calculating the process here in our spreadsheet, we came up with the same number that Melissa had in her computer!
It was also the day to reconcile the bank account with our QuickBooks. It is very satisfying when it balances on the first time to check off the checks and deposits. No typing errors this month!
Planting or replanting is still several days away. They keep revising the White River flood crest upward, now up to 25 feet on Monday through Wednesday. Our return to those fields will not be as soon as we may have hoped, but it is still likely we can get back in there in May.
Have a nice weekend.
