Author Archives: Lance O.

Where did 2021 Go?

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Yes, farming did happen in 2021 at Otto Farms, Inc. But, I just wasn’t into the extra time it takes to keep this website current while planning my exit from farming. Now, mind you, I thought this exit would be in three more years, but God had other plans. After meeting with my financial counselor and accountant to plan “retirement” things just kind of fell together in July bringing about the decision to call 2021 the final year of my farming career!

I will share some pictures with of of my “last year” of farming and move on to the upcoming auction that will be held on March 31, 2022.

2021 should have been a stressful year. We started the year with very little water in the ground. It failed to rain significantly.

March1.08
April1.41
May1.98
June1.3
July0.7
August4.03
September0.2
October2.79
13.49
Summer 2021 Rainfall

The rain in August saved our soybeans and we actually yielded above average on some fields! Corn was another story. Only one field yielded well but not well enough to save us from collecting crop insurance because of poor average corn yields.

I’m not sure what plans I have for this website in the future but I will keep it alive for a while until I figure that out. Farming has been a big part of my entire life. What happens next is left in God’s hands.

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Harvest 2020

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Harvest 2020 brought great surprises with record corn and near record soybean yields! After the summer or COVID and commodity prices crashing, there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

Normally we would harvest the soybeans before corn but they beans were not dry and the weather wasn’t allowing them to dry very fast so we opted to harvest corn until the beans were ready. We had nearly 1/2 our corn harvested before starting soybeans.

Our new grain dryer worked flawlessly allowing us to concentrate on other things to keep harvest running smooth.

  • Combining corn
  • Cloudy day of corn harvest
  • Heading to the truck
  • Down Low
  • Unloading on the truck
  • Scenic Clouds
  • Down the row
  • Filling the truck
  • Stalks and clouds
  • Dusty sunset
  • An opening gap
  • Unloading the truck
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Grain Dryer Replacement

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Just to refresh your memories, we had a grain dryer fire last fall. The dryer was repaired to the point that we could finish drying our harvest but we decided to replace it in time to use for the 2020 season.

Replacing a grain dryer is no small task and it consumed a lot of our spare time during the summer of 2020. To start things out, we thought we had a company lined up to do the crane work for us but they failed to follow through. After a text and phone call we had K & S Millwrights, from Buffalo Lake, MN, lined up to help us with the project. They were doing some work at a nearby town and would get to us once that project was completed.

In the mean time, we had a lot of work to do getting ready for the crane to come. We disconnected everything from our old grain dryer then went to the farm site of the farmer we purchased the “new to us” dryer from and prepped that one for moving.

Moving control panel
Detaching electrical
Extending concrete pad

Removing the old grain dryer

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The crops are up!

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The soybeans are up! It’s a messy look but we expect great results! The system we installed to minimize overlap shuts off every 30″ of seeder width as it crosses into planted ground. Here’s a great example of the results!

  • Electronic shut off results.

Now that soybeans are up, post emerge spraying is the next step for weed control.

Spraying Soybeans

Y-dropping fertilizer on corn in our second year went much better than in 2019. We had a one day window in 2019 and struggled to get fertilizer on. In 2020, we had a much wider window of opportunity. We also decided to try applying at a smaller height stage to widen the window and it worked well.

  • Y-dropping on corn.
  • Y-drop cab view.

Taking short cuts on chemical can sometimes get us in trouble. This year, we had to cultivate two fields because of weed pressure. One of the fields, was wiped out by hail a few years ago and we didn’t realize how much seed is still in the soil from the weeds that took over that year. The other field had a lot of lambsquarters coming and it was too late to spray.

  • Clean field
    Clean field.
  • Cultivating Corn
    Cultivating corn.

Planting 2020 – Fast and Furious

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Sunset

Not the earliest we’ve started but April 21 is an excellent date to get started with planting. With our new air seeder, we had hopes of getting some beans in early, while planting corn, but with no delays or down time corn was in the ground before we knew it.

  • Spring Tillage
  • Spring Tillage Rear View
  • Planting Corn
  • Corn Planting Rear View
  • Burning Seed Bags

Our first year of soybean planting with a no till air seeder was fairly uneventful. There were definitely new things to learn and manage well. Down pressure is critical to get good seed placement.

  • View from the cab
    From the cab
  • planted row
    Seed row
  • After seeding with air seeder
    After no till seeded
  • Night seeding
    Night seeding
  • Filling soybeans
    Filling air seeder
  • Sunset
    Sunset from the cab
  • Sunset
    Sunset from the field

With a Little Help From a Friend

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With equipment ready for the field but fields not ready for planting we use our time to complete projects on the never-ending to do list. We had a couple of cattle gates that needed some leveling and reinforcing. It was kind of muddy so we used pallets as a work platform inside the cattle year. The observers stood at the edge of the concrete for a while and then one brave steer ventured off, through the mud, to get a closer look at the situation.

Taking a stroll around the pasture fence, making sure the electric fencing isn’t grounding out somewhere, always attracts the attention of our steers. You always hear about the curiosity of cats but steers are a close second.

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