Putting A "Dent" In It

 

 The lack of rain is putting a dent in our hopes for a good 2017 dryland corn crop.

Really ... the corn is "denting"  You can see the little indentations in this closeup photo. In other words, when the corn begins to "dent," the kernels are starting to dry down.

Rainfall has been spotty this summer. And our farmstead has been in one of the dry zones. The storms on Saturday night into Sunday dodged our part of the Stafford/Reno County line. We only got 0.30" of rain. As we drove to church Sunday morning, we were seeing puddles in fields and along ditches, so Randy pulled into the co-op to look at their rain gauge. It had 2 inches! We tried not to be jealous. We were on our way to church, after all. 

The weekly U.S. drought monitor released August 1 showed that our part of the world is "abnormally dry" (the part in the yellow).

In reality, rain that falls now will be too late to save the corn crop. The yield potential has already been determined, and it was hot and dry during pollination earlier this summer. Then there wasn't rain to help fill the corn heads either.

There is some corn there, but the ears are small.

We still have some chances for rain this week, so we'll hope it materializes. The milo crop could still benefit from some timely rains.

The milo looks surprisingly good, despite the lack of moisture.

The alfalfa hasn't fared so well. Randy tried a third cutting on a portion of our alfalfa acres. We got a whopping 8 bales off of 45 acres. Some additional acres down now should do a little better because that area got a rain during county fair time, unlike the acres closer to home.

For fields like this one, he decided it wasn't worth the time or the fuel to harvest what was there.

If it rains, it's possible we would still be able to harvest more alfalfa. Right now, Randy is more concerned that we haven't been able to plant any after-harvest sudan. We usually supplement our alfalfa and silage with sudan as part of our cattle's wintertime rations.

All day on Monday, I kept thinking about The Carpenters song, "Rainy Days and Mondays." We would have been celebrating with rain on Monday. It sure wouldn't haven't gotten us "down."

The Second Cutting

When wheat harvest was in the books, it was time for the second cutting of alfalfa. Actually, it was past time, but Randy says he's too old to cut wheat all day and bale all night like he did back in his early days of farming.

With minimal rain, there was a lot less alfalfa to cut this time around.

 

During the first cutting, we'd gotten approximately 400 bales. This time, we only netted 150 bales. Randy didn't even cut one field: A new field planted last summer was too thin to even attempt a second cutting. 

The quality of the hay was good, Randy says. The tonnage just wasn't there. It didn't get rained on before we got it baled this time. (That is kind of a good news, bad news thing. We could use some rain on our dryland corn and milo.)

We will need some rain if we hope to have a third cutting.

These clouds last week didn't bring any rain, but they sure made a picturesque scene.

A note: We didn't get measurable rain here at home last evening. However, we drove to the fairgrounds in Stafford for supper last night, and it was pouring buckets at the time. Our corn north of Stafford did get an inch or so, according to my "sources" (another farm wife).

As we sat in the car with the rain pouring down, it reminded us of a fair when Brent was supposed to do an evening magic show. The audience turned out to be the extension agents, Randy, Jill and me (or about that many). We were lucky we didn't get electrocuted. Now, with no one in 4-H, we just went back home, since the radar showed the rain could last awhile at Stafford. We probably should have stuck it out!

This wasn't the fair talk, but rather, Brent's first 4-H magic talk. I looked for a photo from that night, but it didn't make the 4-H project book. Looking back, a photo from that evening probably should have made the cut!  It was more memorable and probably taught Brent more than the carefully scripted talks.

Into Each Life, Some Rain Must Fall

Into each life, some rain must fall.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh Henry! I suppose you're right. But it would be nice if it didn't fall on freshly-swathed hay.

Don't get me wrong: Many times, we are thankful for rain. And I know some of our farm friends in other states would gladly take an installment of rain to break their drought conditions. So I truly should not complain.

However, much of our first cutting of hay has had four rain showers on it. Yes, count them: 4!

 

Randy custom bales some hay for a neighbor. He got the neighbor's field done before 0.80" of rain fell during mid-afternoon last Saturday. Earlier in the week, we'd already had between 0.30" and 1 inch of rain on the hay. Then Sunday afternoon, we got another 0.10" shower. Then on Monday, the humid day wasn't conducive to drying it out either.

Before he got going again, Randy gave it the "feel" test (demonstrated in the first photo of this blog post). But a more accurate moisture test is completed with a hay probe. Before Randy got rolling full steam ahead, he completed one round bale. He then stuck the probe in the bale to test the moisture. This one was 14.2. If it were above 18, he'd wait until it dried down some more. 

Yesterday afternoon, he got rolling again after it finally dried out enough. He kicked out 130 bales, and then we got another 0.25" of rain. In one field, he had two more rounds to go before it would have been finished. Oh well! There's nothing that can be done about it. 

People always want to know when harvest will begin. And, if they are talking wheat harvest, we'll probably be looking at next week some time.

But another kind of harvest - alfalfa - is already underway ... complete with stops and starts and false alarms.

Let's hope it's not a foreshadowing of wheat harvest!