Re: The weather 2019

[SwampDonkey]

Cleared out last night before dark and is 55F this morning before daylight. Haven't had any source of heat for a week now, except sunshine. Potato plants about doubled their size this week. 8)

Have only seen a couple moose this spring. But they are there, leaving behind tracks and moose marbles. Finally might be thinning them out some with the change in the hunting season. ;)

[thecfarm]

Heat is on. 62°. That rain filled up the ruts behind the field at the mailbox.

[WDH]

97 degrees.  High humidity just sucks the water out of you. 

[lxskllr]

Fantastic day. Topped out around 80°, and rock bottom humidity. If this is what summer always was, I wouldn't hate it so much.

Didn't do much. Checked out a new saw shop, and got a new bar for my 362. Afterward, I stopped off for pit beef, which I seldom do on weekends. Got home, drank a beer, and fell asleep listening to the radio. It was a long week, and I guess I still had some recovery to do. Trying to figure out what I'll do with the rest of my evening.

[doc henderson]

showers off and on today.  wife is working.  taught my son to change the oil in his jeep, first oil change.  the cartridge on top is nice.  he helped me mask off the glass on some outdoor lights.  and now they are painted.  a bit of 1/2 inch hail 20 minutes ago.  my daughter and i had just got back from toy story 4.  she is 20 but going into animation.  she said it was great animation.  went and piled, turned my compost row, and did not see any snakes.  saw three of them a few days ago.

[rjwoelk]

Got our first real rain  since spring thaw. 2 inches. On Thursday. 

[chevytaHOE5674]

39° again last night. It's the end of June and we are in the 30s at night and still struggling to get into the 60s during the day. Crazy crazy year.

[SwampDonkey]

60F overnight with a north wind. Clear blue skies. Highs still in the 70's for the next few days. Nice summer for a change without the heat.

Male blue bird singing this morning in the yard, still hasn't found a mate. Musta been a hard winter on blue birds. Neighbors who have had nest boxes up for years have not seen any.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Warmest night all year at 60°, now its dropped to 49° and rain. We needed the rain so no complaints there, but we could do without the cool temps.

[SwampDonkey]

It was another nice day here. The north wind is still blowing and it was rather cool. Never reached 72 until after dinner. Nice days for working, but still favouring that sciatic nerve so been home puttering around.

[thecfarm]

The heat is off!! Been warm the last few days. This is more like it. Not that I like the warm weather,but it's nice to see things grow.

[lxskllr]

It was about 87° and pretty humid. Temps are going up this week, with nasty humidity. Not taking the brushcutter to work this week. May do some machete stuff. Easier to carry, and less hot gear. I think I've got the vines scared. They're suckering like crazy. Time to go through, and lop off their little green heads  :^D

[Al_Smith]

It finally slacked off as far as rain .I was very surprised to find soy beans and corn sprouting up . In these days of "no till " I get confused because unlike years ago the land is not tilled first and evidently they can sow under more wet conditions .It might turn out better than expected with any luck like a late fall .

[SwampDonkey]

No idea about 'no till'. After awhile I would think it would get too compacted and impede drainage and aeration for roots. Ones I've noticed doing that was because the soil was shallow on top of pure sand or heavy clay.

[btulloh]

It would be worth taking a few minutes to look up the details on no-till.  Briefly, no-till has lots of benefits for the appropriate field crops, one of which is less ground compaction.  No-till doesn't mean NEVER-till though, and every few years depending on the nature of your soil you have turn the field and start fresh.  Depending on actual conditions, this interval may be lengthened by sub-soiling.  There is very little bottom plowing any more - large disc-harrows with a drag can turn and prep a field in a single pass.

Add/edit:  I'm no expert, I just go by what I see around here.  Looking at some university websites - like NDSU - I see that no-till practiced correctly is never-till and the soil structure is better than tilled ground.  I don't know if that's a regional difference or what.  I'll leave that for individual study.

And now we return you to regular programming on the weather channel . . .

[lxskllr]

Another icky day, and supposed to be worse tomorrow. Left the house this morning, and it was 73°, and ~95% humidity. The temps went up to 88°, and the humidity dropped to 62% by the end of the day. It was ok if you sat still in the shade, but awful as soon as you moved, especially in the sun.

[SwampDonkey]

Getting some rain today and maybe some tomorrow. Need the water every week for the garden. ;)

[thecfarm]

Been a nice stretch of weather. Yesterday was cloudy and started to rain aboout 4pm. All done now,sun off and on today.

[Al_Smith]

On that no til they run certain tillage equipment periodically like big field cultivators etc .I haven't seen an actual mold board plow used in years .Modern methods are beyond my understanding with global positioning on harvesting  and planting .What years ago were 40 acre fields are now 160 acre fields .The fences are mostly all gone .North of here ,around Toledo the fields are even larger.Some looked to me to be almost a section ,640 acres .It's starting  to look like Kansas .
As far as drainage it's all been tiled which has it's own problems .It gets rid of the water but it just goes some place else--down hill on the neighbors mainly ..  

[Al_Smith]

Events happened starting in the late 60's up to the 1980's .Thousand of acres of prime hardwoods fell to the mighty D8 Caterpllars .The escalating price of farm land prompted land clearing to generate more .It was rather short sighted .It took 200 years to grow those oaks and only several weeks to wipe them out forever .It was a shame and I doubt ever repeated  on a scale as it once was .If I recall correctly there were some tax incentives to curtail that practice .

[btulloh]

Another hot one coming today.  Mid 90's, the usual humidity.


12% fewer acres devoted to agriculture now than in 1930.  USDA

[SwampDonkey]

If it's like here, the only time the farmer got paid for all his work was when he sold out and retired. The good years were far between and often the woods was cut just to pay the bills and tuck a little away. I've seen thousands of acres cut around here and none for farmland. The old timers had all the good land cleared in these parts and a lot of that returned to forest and has been cut twice since. I've seen a few tree plantations returned to farm to, but that is small potatoes in comparison to cut and leave as is. Drivers buy comment "the trees are some small up here". Well it was all cut in the last 3 decades. Takes 120 years to get a 20" sugar maple up here, we don't get no 4" per ten years of growth. It's 80 years to get an 8"-10" one dominant in the canopy in all the timber cruises I did. I could have 2 crops of balsam fir 16-18" by then.

[lxskllr]

Hot again today. Didn't do much surveying, but I got a bunch of machete work done on the farm. It's too hot for gearing up for brushcutting, and I wanted travel light. I think I'm actually getting somewhere with the bittersweet. It doesn't look like it, but it's all thinner, with a bunch of panic suckering. Pretty easy to cut, and easier to see, so I pulled a bunch of it up by the roots.

[lxskllr]

93°, but fairly low humidity by MD standards; 50%. It's simply awful  :^D  Turned my ac on for the first time. Thermostat said 79°, so I put it on 78° which is about as low as I set it. It takes a bit of the edge off the humidity, and my ceiling fans help. If energy were free. it would be set at 60°  :^D

[SwampDonkey]

Been a wet few days here and evening thunderstorms. None of the hard to live with heat though.

Potato buds are right there ready to open up, will soon be flowering in pink. Filling the rows now. A little sun should do the trick.