Spring planting 2012

[sandhills]

Picked my corn yesterday, wasn't too hard to pick 4 strips left for insurance, everything else is in the silage pile  :-\, I think i got a whopping 45 bu in the wagon  :D.  Gonna start beans today and hoping for 12-15 bu/acre but that may be a stretch, they're really shattering bad and everyone else's seems to be too.  Norm I'm with ya, we're gonna have a real hard time doing anything next year if doesn't start raining, at least this year there was some feed to go after.

[Mark K]

Norm now that your done there you can come up here :D. We are planning on starting mid-week with beans if the rain ever stops. Going to start with beans as the corn hasnt dried down far enough yet. We got both drier's ready and augers set up yesterday in the rain. Have a feeling our corn yields are going to be all over the place. Corn we planted late looks better than our early corn.

[Kansas]

Still thinking about going with a little wheat here. Seem to get at least some moisture in the winter/spring. Have it no till drilled in. I would guess my beans will be harvested within 10 days. I suspect if I am lucky, the 60 acres of beans I have will fit on one semi. And the mudflaps won't be dragging.

[Okrafarmer]

Kansas, if you suspect the moisture will still be low enough for only a marginal wheat crop, you may consider not fertilizing the wheat, as the fertilizer won't help the wheat if the water isn't there. Maybe you don't fertilize wheat after soybeans anyway, I don't know. Just saying maybe you could save the money, and wheat is fairly resilient without fertilizer.

[Kansas]

Lots of cattle guys are planting rye around here. I might cash rent the ground out, provided they have the crop in in time to go back to soybeans. Normally I do the bean corn rotation. Guess two years of back to back beans wouldn't hurt.

The guy is harvesting my soybeans as we speak. He never seems to stop and unload the combine. I would like to think he has a super sized bin on the combine. Somehow, I don't think so.

[Norm]

Lots of corn coming out of the fields still, beans are pretty much all done. We've moved on to fall field work. I run a implement called a turbo chopper on corn ground that's going into beans next year. My buddy has the ripper over at his place working some bottom ground that's pretty compacted. We'll bale some alfalfa today off one of my fields that's going to be put into corn.

So far I've only hit one fence.  :D

[chain]

We're about 40% harvested with soybeans. Some of our class I land was hardest hit maybe 8 bu. acre, with green stem syndrome throughout. The fields looked like  mid-summer with green leaves and stems but pods matured and many beans shelling out on the ground.

But in some of our lower ground with deeper silty-clay soils was yielding more than average, 60-70 bu. acre. So all things considered we may average out just above 30 bu.

They've taken our area out of the severe drought, yet I could put my whole leg down in  some of these cracks today and,  the main drainage ditch, a person could walk for twenty or more miles down in the bottom and never get his boots muddy! ???

My old 'strut & bluster' landlord called and wanted to know about his crop. I was proud to tell him we had harvested 46 bu. soybeans per acre on his farm. Well, he said, "that's not bad but a long way from the record of 300 bushels an acre!" Hmmmm, I said, " get me the farmer that said that, I'll let him have the farm for say, just 150bu. an acre!" Then I told him that was probably a record corn yield, not soybeans. :D

[Burlkraft]

So far I've only hit one fence.  :D

That's not too bad  :D

[tpyounome]

Corn yields here are all over the range.  20 to 150.  200 + is normal.  The beans have done a little better.  20 to 60.  60 is about normal.  It just depends if they got an inch of rain in july.  Most of us have crop insurance.  But it still is hurting some guys pretty hard. 

[sandhills]

We got finished with beans last night, my dryland went about 14 bu, I was hoping they would make 10 so I was happy I guess, haven't got all dad's hauled in yet but his irrigated beans were considerably better in most places.  Irrigated corn around here has been really good across the board, all things considered but those who have it payed a lot for it.

[Mark K]

We're starting harvest today 8). Got a good killing frost last night so the corn ought to dry down a little quicker. Just waiting for the frost to come off the beans going to start after lunch. 900 acres of beans and 1300 of corn to go! Hope to get it off before the snow flys.

[Kansas]

So far I've only hit one fence.  :D

That's not too bad  :D

Well that depends. If a fence a half mile long and you hit the whole thing, steel posts and all, that might be kinda bad.

All my beans got harvested yesterday. I called a friend who might be interested in putting in rye for hay. Another friend of mine rented ground to him, with the stipulation he had to have it hayed by May 15th. I told him the same thing, so I could go back to soybeans. Question is, we really don't know where to set cash rent at. Its raining a little bit now, and probably will this weekend, so we just left it that we would try to figure it out. I don't know anything about rye. Across the mill there was a field planted that has come up nicely, with basically no moisture.

[Okrafarmer]

Rye is probably a good choice. Millet is the other dry land crop, I guess, along with certain sorghums. But they are summer crops, IIRC. Certain kinds of wheat are drought resistant too.

[nas]

So far I've only hit one fence.  :D

So is that more or less than usual?  Were you aiming for it?  how was the yield?
Inquiring minds need to know ??? ;D

Nick

[Norm]

Well it was dark and the turbo chopper roller baskets are further back than I thought. Luckily it's a fence between me and the neighbor and to call it a fence is a stretch. I doubt I did more than break some old barb wire but didn't get out to look as it was late. I decided it was time to call it a day after that, working long hours makes for mistakes and busting up equipment can get expensive fast.

At the local coop there's a bulletin board called the wall of shame with pictures of such things. One of the best was a guy fell asleep and hit a high power line poles with a 4wd and 50' field cultivator. So far I've not had anyone around me with a camera.

Nick if you don't hit at least one fence in the fall and the spring your not farming.  :D

[sandhills]

 :D :D Don't worry Norm, last spring I caught a hot wire with the harrow at about 11 pm one night and didn't realize it until I was about a quarter mile away from where it was suppose to be......but hey, that left the other quarter mile still on the posts  :-\.

[Kansas]

On a not quite related note, never pull your pickup up to a hot wire at the gate, have the pickup touch the wire, then step out of the pickup. Talk about getting woke up in a hurry.

[sandhills]

Yeah, been there done that too, worst part was the pickup died and I pushed it off the road into the hot wire, it really stunk trying to push it back but I was running late and didn't have much choice.  I've always said I'm the best ground God ever created, if anyone would've been around to witness that it would've been proven.  :

[SwampDonkey]

Saskatchewan farmers this year report very high yields, well above average, in their grains, and have ran out of storage on many farms. Bushel of wheat dropped from $9 to $6 because of surplus.

I was going to ask Okra here if he and the wife ever cook with hulled millet? I have began including it in my diet. It's about like cooking rice. I toast it a little first in a sauce pan before adding the water. I have made it like cereal, in muffins and a pilaf with squash, onion peppers and red quinoa. I'm always experimenting. ;D