Thursday, July 9, 2026
Yesterday in the late afternoon, I was able to finish off the planting of double-crop soybeans. PTL! That process began with two small fields I planted on June 17 but took almost a month to wrap up. The delay was caused by frequent rainy periods that kept wheat harvest incomplete… until July 1. I was not able to get back into planting of DCB until July 2nd and 3rd. There was another rain delay until Monday the 6th, and with 3 big days’ planting, the DCB were finished off yesterday the 8th. Now, the prayer goes from “please let me get the planting done” to “please get those little beans growing”!
Planting on Friday, July 3 at the Leser farm
Planting DCB at the Holscher farm, Monday, July 6
On the way home yesterday from the last field, I was caught in a little rain…
The air cart and drill remain hooked to the JD 9R540, just in case it will be needed for any more replanting. (We hope not!) It will be a bigger task to clean it all up before being stored. The last 2 fields were ones that had a neighbor knife in a slurry of liquid hog manure…clearing their big pit. There were spots in those fields that were not quite ‘settled’ and dried down from that application. But I felt compelled to press on, for 95%+ of the field area planted well.
This week, the two Brandons have taken charge of the needed spraying. The soybeans needed a 2nd application of glyphosate (Roundup) plus a fungicide treatment. They have been quite diligent in this work, scouting each field, and performing the needed spray treatments. Now that the planting is ‘caught up’, I’ll turn my attention to hand spraying field borders and roadsides and ditches from the seat of the Gator. Next week, I’ll probably return to running the little JD 6145R tractor with the R15 rotary cutter (bush hog). I like to make the roadsides, the riparian strips, and waterways look nice all summer.
So, today, we feel a bit of release from the pressure of the late planting season that extended far beyond the month of June. Once the guys get the spraying ‘caught up’, their days can go back to a more regular routine, too.
Larry has been here most days delivering wheat to ADM at Newburgh, Indiana. We had sold 70 truckloads to be delivered in June-July. He can easily make 2-a-day. It’s good to have him taking care of that while other tasks are being done.
Tomorrow, I’ll meet with a crop insurance adjuster to process our claim for replanting corn and soybeans. The rainy weather and river flooding has created a need this season for an unusually large number of replant acres, especially in soybeans. That will be another task to tick off the list tomorrow.
I’ll include now a picture from the 4th of July. It was the most beautiful day you could imagine.
