How far we have come.
Was cleaning out a bunch of junk from under my desk trying to find a bunch of other junk when I came across a milk crate full of old equipment manuals. I had took them out of the shed when we cleaned the shed out last winter and had forgot all about them.
There is a manual for just about everything it seems. All of them for equipment we don’t have anymore. Technology changes, thank goodness. I would hate to have to harvest on a combine with no cab! Not only that, but our efficiencies and our productivity increases when we adopt new technologies.
So, it is still amazing to me when some of the older generation out there doesn’t get it about technology. Yes, it costs money. But just because something worked then doesn’t mean it works now. Or maybe it works but it is not efficient or as productive. Maybe we didn’t have a choice “back then” and we do now. Maybe to be competitive we don’t have a choice but to adopt the newest technology, no matter short lived it might be.
GPS is one of those technologies that has brought about change. Chemicals are another. Things have changed greatly, but in some respect they haven’t changed all the much lately. You don’t see many cultivators anymore. You don’t find anyone with a rod and chain for measuring off acres. Yet there are those who say that cultivation is better than chemicals. There are also those who say that we don’t need all this GPS stuff to farm with either.
Those few loud voices are right to some extent. We don’t need all of the latest and greatest technology to farm. But it sure makes it much easier. And it makes it more productive.
Rain and Wind Yesterday
Shot some video of the rain as it came in with the wind. It got pretty sporty here for a while. Lots of limbs down in the area, some homes damaged and barn doors ripped off. But it RAINED. That’s the sugar that makes the rest of the bitter be OK.
Today was another hot one but we have a chance of rain tomorrow……….lets hope we have primed the pump with the last rain to keeep it going for a while.
Sorry for such a short video, all I could bet before it got sporty.
It still rains
What an unexpected blessing this morning and afternoon. Rain.
Some pop up thunderstorms rolled this way. I poured half an inch of water in the gauge to prime the pump and we got .75 of an inch out of the two rain events today. It was much needed and changed the color of the beans very quickly.
The air temperature dropped almost 30 degrees after the rains moved through. That was a very nice addition to the rain!
Corn is being shelled southeast of here. I expect to see some shelled here in this county middle of next week if not earlier.
Corn, Heat, GDU’s and Yield.
Late last evening I spent some time in the corn field. According to my GDU clock, I have accumulated 2,703 GDU’s (Growing Degree Units. An excellent primer on GDU’s for corn is here at OSU)since 19 April. This corn field was planted on 18 April, so I know I should have few more GDU’s than that. That should be enough to bring this corn to physiological maturity, or black layer.
Dan Davidson does a great job of defining black layer here at his DTN Blog. Suffice it to say that when the black layer, a layer of “dead cells” forms at the base of the kernel, all water and dry matter accumulation quits in the kernel. The black layer can be seen when you split the kernel open as noted in the pictures I took below.
Now that the corn has black layered it is time to see what our expected yield is going to be. Using the formula I described on Monday, I went out and counted ears per 17.5 ft of row for corn planted in 30 inch rows. I averaged 30 or 30, 000 plants per acre. Not bad because I dropped 32,000 seeds, so I ended up with 94% of my dropped population. That’s better than the advertised or guaranteed % germ on the sack! Not bad.
Next, I counted the average number of rows per the sampled ears. Again, I chose the odd numbered ears starting with the fifth ear in my sample. One sample set is shown below. Here is a big hint: while your average number of rows can be an odd number, when you count the rows on each ear they will be an even number. If you ever come across an ear with an odd number of rows, let me know……….we will make a fortune! My sample came up with 17 rows on average.
Then you count the number of kernels long the ear is. I cheat a bit here. I don’t count the first 5 butt kernels or the last five tip kernels. Don’t ask me why, I just don’t. I don’t feel they are representative of the rest of the sample. In my sample set I got 31 average kernels per length of ear. Again not too bad.
At this point we can estimate yield. 30,000 ears per acre that are 17 rows around and 31 rows long equals (30,000 X 17 X 31) 15,810,000 kernels per acre. Divided by 90,000 kernels per bushel and that (15,810,000/90,000) gives us 175 bushel per acre. I will take that this year!
The one problem I see is that there is not much kernel depth as noted below. This is the effect of the hot weather on the corn crop. Corn likes night time temperatures of 67-70 degrees. This allows the corn to better move water and dry matter into the grain. With the high night time temps we have had (80+ now for 6 weeks) the fill has resulted in shallower grain depth.
As a result, I would knock off 15% of my yield estimate for shallower grain depth, and now say that 150 bushel an acre will be my yield. But rembember, I fudge a bit, not counting the butt and tip kernels, so I expect it to be a bit better than my reduced guess.
One thing to notice is that there are ears in the field that look like this one below. Here we see that the ear has robbed water and dry matter from the tip kernels (the last to fill) to the lower kernels to make sure the plant fills and reproduces. This will cut yields in a lot of fields this year.
Well, so much for my yield tour here at my own farm.
Today, I will be speaking at the Brookside Labs Consultants meeting in St Louis.
Busy Day
Awoke to fog this morning. The air was so think you could cut it with a knife. And you could feel it when you breathed.
While I was there I took a couple of picture so the double crop soybeans. They sure need a rain as they are blooming and beginning to get a few pods. They are going to be short. I just hope they make 30 bushel but realize that might not be possible. The nice thing about these double crops is that they still have a long way to go, and we still have most of August and September to fill them out. Especially if the heat holds on.
Well now its wheat to get cleaned today, then off to get a couple of computers fixed and few farm visits to get some recommendations done. I also have to put the finishing touches on my presentation for a meeting tomorrow in St Louis. Busy, busy day, again!
Corn harvest begins, sort of…..
Corn silage harvest has begun in the area. Silage is the removal of the entire plant, from the ground up, by use of a chopper that takes the stalk, leaves and ear, and chops it up into a fine feed product and blows it into a trailer or truck to be stored in a silo. It is then allowed to ferment and used as a livestock feed, especially during the winter months.
What is significant about silage chopping is that the rule of thumb around here is once the first silage is chopped its about two weeks until the first corn is shelled. Corn shelling is when you see the combines run through the field and strip off the ears from the stalk and then shell the grain off the ear. The shelled corn is usually stored in a grain bin or taken to an elevator for shipment to a river terminal.
So we find ourselves about 15 days away from seeing some corn shelled. I think it will happen much quicker than that, though. I really look for someone to try it by weeks end. There is a lot of corn that is drying up fast with a lack of rain and the very hot temperatures.
Yield tours begin this week. Yield tours are the social networking of farmers, suppliers and buyers that go out in the heat and gather corn ears and take plant stand counts for estimating the yield. It is a very simple process. For 30 inch corn rows count the number of ears in 17.5 feet. Then take the 3rd, 5th and 9th ear and count the number of rows of kernels and number of kernels long the rows are. Multiply the number of ears by the number of rows by the number of kernelslong and divide by 90. Your formula looks something like this (ears X rows X length)/90.
So 28 ears in 17.5 foot of row times 14 rows around and 30 kernels long = (28 X 14 X 30)/90 or 130 bu corn!
It will be interesting to see what numbers the tours come up with.
Out the Back Door
OK with the week all screwed up with jury duty and everything else that went on I decided to celebrate the good news of the “no surgery yet” verdict from the surgeon with some brats and onions on the grill.
We will return to regular AG and Firearms post next week………………I promise!
Wheat, Beans and Fertilizer
Well the Russian drought has caused all kinds of panic in the wheat markets that have pulled the corn and bean markets along with them. However the basis has widened each day so the flat price has stayed the same. But that has not deterred people from jumping back on the wheat band wagon. Seed is getting scarce around here.
People dont understand how something like the Russians can cause the wheat price in Illinois to go up. Hey folks, we are all connected now. As Disney says so well, Its a small, small world!
I got jury duty over with yesterday evening late and spent today trying to get back the three days I lost to my civic duty. I made some progress with a computer project started and near finished, got the sprayer out and got two loads of weed killer down on the double crop beans, two more to go, and got the wheat sampled to send off for a germ test.
Well it was a good start, anyway. I think that got me only three and a half days behind instead of four……….
I have got to get with my trucker and get some lime ordered. Soil test show that I need to spread some lime this fall. I hope it is dry enough to get the job done this year. I have also got my N, P and K fertilizer ordered for the wheat ground that I intend to plant. Prices on inputs are creeping up at a fair pace around here right now.
Tomorrow I hope to finish up the last two loads of spraying so we can put that to bed for the year. Then its off to the Surgeon to see about my shoulder……….not something I am looking forward to by the way. After that I need to spend some time on the phone, lime spreader to contact, seed cleaner to contact, seed treater to contact and last but not least is to get ready for Saturday.
Saturday is, I was informed today, yard day here at Robertson World Wide Headquarters. Which is necessary, it’s time for more than just a mowing………but not something I am looking forward to. However she who must be obeyed has spoken. I am wondering who will figure out how to sneak off first, me or the kids.
What do you do?
Ever wonder what to do when you don’t know what to do? You know you need to do something but don’t know what it is. Well I am there today.
Lt Gen Hal Moore, the Commander of US forces in LZ X Ray in Vietnam, whose story was made famous in the movie We Were Soldiers, says that there is always one more thing you can do. He always says to trust your instincts, follow your gut, not your heart. That is kind of contrary to what we have been told in the world, that we should follow our heart.
So hear I sit, needing to make a decision on weed control, particularly one field of seed beans. I knew it was coming, but I have been delaying it, thinking I could out-think it. My heart tells me to find a way to control the weeds other than to spray another application of the same weed control. This “alternative” method involves spending more money and might not work as well as I have it in my mind. The heart will lie to you, to get you to take a chance, because you want something to work.
My gut tells me that no matter what I do, I have lost yield that I will not get back. That’s reality. It also tells me that I have enough chemicals left over that are already paid for to nuke those weeds. Then, if they survive, or not, I did all I could do. My gut also tells me that, if it doesn’t rain, it won’t matter which road I travel. Reality again.
My gut also tells me that I can take them out next year with tillage and the corn chemicals easier and cheaper than I can with a new piece of equipment and a hope that crazy idea would work.
When I get off jury duty this week, I am going with my gut. So if you see a bright flash and mushroom cloud North and East of Benton, you will know that I nuked them. Those that survive, survive to fight another day. And if I don’t kill the beans, and it rains, well we might just make something yet!
Whatever………
Results of the MRI is that I have a tear of my rotator cuff. It “looks like a minor tear, but we can,t be sure, it could be worse”. So a very expensive procedure that results in a “we are just guessing” diagnosis. Great. I think I could have saved the money and told them that I have a “minor tear but I cant be sure its not worse” based on the amount of pain that I am in.
The usual medical double talk and non committal diagnosis followed. So now its time to see a surgeon.
More Dr. visits mean more billable hours…………
And if that’s not enough to make you apathetic, I start jury duty in a couple of hours. What a way to make $10 a day?
Waterways to fix, weeds that need sprayed, equipment that needs worked on, parts to pick up, meetings to go to, soil test to figure, fertilizer to order, seed to order and me doing nothing productive.
Wheat, Court and Shoulders
Well I have pretty much decided that I will plant wheat this fall. After making the proclamation during canola harvest that I would not plant wheat any more, the markets have swung to the positive side or more correctly the profitable side and now have me ready to plant all kinds of wheat this fall.
I have been looking at inputs and they are reasonable for the most part and between a $6 plus wheat sale and a $9 plus bean sale the cropping “system” is a pretty good money maker. So today will be spend locking in some inputs, seed and then watching the markets and making some advanced sales.
Today also begins eight weeks of being on jury duty. I suspect that I wont serve near eight weeks, but will have to serve on something. So this is a scheduling nightmare because I don’t have a clue as to when I will be on or off, and I have a lot of things to do to get ready for harvest.
Last but not least, today is the day for seeing what the MRI says on my shoulder. Not looking foward to this either.
Observations in Agriculture
FloodingSeptember 4, 2010HyMark High Spots
ChiliSeptember 4, 2010Confessions of a Pioneer Woman | Ree Drummond
September SunriseSeptember 4, 2010AgWired
Know a California FarmerSeptember 4, 2010Macks Page
Annual ConferenceAugust 13, 2010