Corny As Kansas in August

Walking through a corn field these days is starting to sound like you're shaking cornflakes from the cardboard cereal box into a bowl.

Our 2019 corn crop is beginning to dry down. There's still plenty of green, but it's losing its lush, verdant color as it transitions toward harvest.

A corn field nearing harvest looks like it needs an airbrush before a beauty shot. In contrast, I think a wheat field looks pretty from start to finish ... well, except if it gets hailed on or a combine is stuck in the field. OK, I guess there are exceptions to every generalization. But, by the time the corn crop is ready to combine, those dried out leaves and husks just don't look that appealing from afar.

Last week, we tested moisture on some fields to see if the moisture was right for transporting to Haw Ranch Feedlot near Turon. While traditional co-op elevators want moisture content at around 16 or below, the feedlot wanted high-moisture corn - grain between 24 to 32 percent moisture.

Randy hand-shelled some kernels, choosing a couple of cobs from stalks that looked more dried down. He put them in the moisture tester while I held on to the canister to prevent spills.

The drier cobs' moisture tested at 18.0.

He then tried a couple of cobs from stalks still showing more green. However, the moisture contest was 21.2, so it was still too dry for the feedlot and not yet dry enough for the co-op. 

We had been missing the rains that had zigzagged across Kansas in the past week or so. However, on Saturday night into Sunday morning, we got 2.90" of rain. It filled the mudholes back up, and it will put the 2019 corn harvest on hold for awhile longer. (But the rain was great for sudan and milo. We hope it will help boost the third cutting of alfalfa, too.)

The prevented planting of wheat acres meant an increase to those we devoted to corn on the County Line this year.

Photo taken August 2 - If you compare how brown the field is now, you can see how much it's dried down this month.

The countdown - and dry down - continues. Planting date makes a difference.

Both the following photos were taken on Friday, August 23.

The field in the photo above was planted a week before the field in the photo below. It's the same variety of corn, so the week difference in planting date is definitely evident. The fields are about 2 miles apart, so there could be a slight difference in rainfall, but not appreciable.

Let's hope this year's corn story has a happy ending!

The Last Hurrah: A Farm Update

"The last hurrah" for an aging alfalfa field has been a bright spot in a cloudy (literally) spring.

At the end of March, Randy planted oats in an alfalfa field he plans to retire after this growing season. An alfalfa field is productive about 7 to 8 years. This final cutting will provide a mixture of alfalfa and oats that we will bale up for cattle feed.

 

The excessive rain we've gotten since last fall has been a challenge in many aspects. But as Randy stood in the waist-high oats, it was obvious that like the Luke Brian song says, "Rain is a good thing" ... at least, for this field.

After Randy got to the end of a swath, he got off the tractor to tell me, "This is fun!"

Even the alfalfa has grown taller than normal, as it's tried to climb high enough to reach the sun from the canopy created by the taller oats. You can see its purple flowers among the oats.

The oats had reached the soft dough stage when they were swathed.

The oats and alfalfa are so lush that Randy had to move slowly through the field, more like swathing sudan than alfalfa.

Each swath left behind big windrows.

 

Unfortunately, we got 0.60" of rain on the swathed hay Friday night. Randy had hoped it would be dry enough to bale over Father's Day weekend, but the additional rain fall curtailed that schedule.

He was able to bale a field of alfalfa hay Sunday evening.

 Yes, working on Father's Day made him happy.

On Monday afternoon, the oat hay was dry enough to begin baling.

The first round yielded 14 bales!

I got another "This is fun!" from my farmer ... until the baler slugged and he was pulling hay out by hand. He wasn't able to bale past dark, since the hay got too wet.

OTHER FARM UPDATES 

 

BUMPER CROP ... TURTLES

Wet weather is not good for hay baling. But it's good for turtles. This snapping turtle was visiting our driveway last week. That's quite a distance from a creek, but there are a plethora of mudholes to visit in the vicinity.

WHEAT

June 13, 2019

The rain and cool weather have slowed Wheat Harvest 2019. By this time in most recent years, our combines have been rolling through golden fields. Here's the breakdown:

2010:  June 18
2011:  June 10
2012:  May 26 (an anomaly and the earliest harvest, by far, we've ever had)
2013:  June 21
2014:  June 17
2015:  June 20
2016:  June 15
2017:  June 12
2018: June 12
2019: ???????????????

This year, there's still a lot of green. The weather map shows the chance for more rain this week. The weather is something we can't control. Last fall, because of 15 inches of rain, we couldn't even plant 400 acres of what Randy had planned for our 2019 wheat crop. So the strange weather continues.

When we were taking photos in the wheat field last week, it felt more like spring than mid-June. The hot winds that blow in harvest weather just haven't been around much. On the other hand, the cooler weather helped fill the heads.

Another field - June 16, 2019

The last several days have started to feel like harvest weather. However, there is rain in the forecast today. According to the National Weather Service, severe thunderstorms are "very likely," with the possibility for hail and high winds. Scattered thunderstorms remain possible for all areas from Thursday night through Sunday.

So, at this point, we'll just have to see what happens. (I guess that's always true!)

MILO

 

 The milo crop is up and growing.

I took this photo as Randy was planting milo on June 4 (a different field). He planted 95 total acres of milo and 25 acres of silage.

June 13, 2019

It's off to a good start.

CORN

June 13, 2019

The prevented planting of wheat acres meant an increase to those we are devoting to corn on the County Line this year. We planted 600 acres of corn in mid- to late April on ground that Randy had planned to go to wheat this year.

April 2019

We are planting more corn this year than ever - 600 acres. That's not much when compared to other farmers, especially those with irrigated acres, but it's significant for us.

Another 12+ inches of rain in May means a lot of mudholes in the corn fields. The cool weather in early June also slowed down the growth. But it's making progress.

It would be nice if we could "bank" some cooler days and a little rain for when the corn is tasseling.

ALSO IMPORTANT - A COOKIE UPDATE

I spent an afternoon replenishing my cookie supply for harvest. I tripled my go-to cookie recipe and then divided the dough, making it into five different varieties. I bag some of them two-by-two in snack-sized bags and stick them in the freezer. That makes it easy to pull out bags for meals-to-the-field treats. Randy has bales piled. I have cookies.

Prevented Planting: Wheat 2019

Sunset - October 25, 2018

This sunset sky photo is undeniably pretty.

But the reflection of that sunset sky in mud puddles reveals a big problem for us this fall. For the first time ever, we weren't able to plant almost one-third of our 2019 wheat crop - about 385 acres. This has never happened since Randy began planting wheat in 1974 as a senior in high school.

The ground was too wet to plant after 14-plus inches in October and 2.5 inches more in November, along with three snows.

To receive full crop insurance coverage on wheat, we needed to plant the 2019 wheat crop by October 31. That simply wasn't possible on low-lying areas. It was either under water or too muddy to drive a drill through. 

The sunset over the Zenith branch of the Kanza Co-op revealed another storm system on the way.

If we had been able to plant by November 15, we could have done so and received reduced insurance coverage. However, with the additional rain and snow, it wasn't possible.

We have elected to take a prevented planting option in our crop insurance policy. It will pay a percentage of our revenue guarantee. Part will be paid now and more could be paid later, if we don't collect crop insurance on the next crop.

The "other side" of the sunset, October 25, 2018

To qualify for prevented planting coverage, "the insurable cause of loss must be weather related and must be common to the area. The cause of loss must have prevented other producers in similar situations from planting the intended crop. ... The prevented planting acreage must have been planted and harvested at least once in the previous three years."

Next spring, we plan to plant dryland corn (and a little milo) on the acres we couldn't plant to wheat. The cost of planting corn is appreciably higher than the cost of planting wheat due to seed costs, fertilizer and herbicide. Because we are a totally dryland farm, wheat typically performs better than corn on our acreage. 

October 3, 2018

In addition to not being able to plant some acres, Randy also had to replant most of our seed wheat and some of our other fields, totaling about 300 acres. This was an additional expense with seed cost, labor, fuel and equipment usage.

At this point, none of the wheat looks very good. That's because of too much rain, not enough sunshine, poor germination and emergence.

We'll hope conditions improve before we truck our Harvest 2019 to Zenith next June!

October 29, 2018