Author Archives: Lance O.

The 2019 Corn Challenge!

By | | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

2019 – the year to forget!

There was no reason to expect the 2019 corn harvest to be easy but, in hindsight, it was the worst year of farming I have ever experienced! Planting corn a month later than usual is never a good thing but coupling it with the fact that the entire summer was cool and wet made the resulting crop yield and quality a costly challenge both monetarily and mentally. Corn yields themselves were okay but, when faced with the reality of dryer gas expenses due to wetter than usual corn along with an LP shortage driving prices higher yet and elevator charges and discounts for wet corn delivered to them, this year was one for the books.

  • Brittle and broken corn.
  • Unchopped corn stalks.
  • Mold on corn.
  • Bees wing from grain dryer.
Continue reading →

Soybean Harvest 2019

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment
  • A beautiful day to harvest!
  • A view from the cab.

2019 presented us with challenges in timeliness and quality for soybean and corn harvesting. Harvest was much later than usual, which meant that we didn’t have the normal, dry weather we need for soybeans to come out of the field at less than 13% moisture. This is a problem in a couple of ways. First the elevators will discount the soybeans brought in over 13% by 1% for every 1/2% they are over 13%. As the moisture climbs higher, the discount percent increases more yet. The second challenge is presented because we raise seed beans for Pioneer. They don’t want our soybeans for seed if they are over 14%. We waited through two days of sun and slight warmth to get to that point and still ended up with a bin of seed that tested higher than 14%.

Continue reading →

Scale Weigh Bar Replacement

By | | ,
Leave a comment

We rely on a platform scale to weigh the grain we bring from the fields to our storage bins. It is not a legal scale but gets us close enough to knowing, load by load, what is dumped at our bin site. Over the past couple of years it has become unreliable and finally failed completely this fall as we tested it while getting our grain handling system ready for harvest. Normally, this would have been discovered too late in the year to do anything about it but, with the late harvest, we had a window of opportunity to order and replace the weigh bars.

Continue reading →

Cattle Yard Concrete

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment

With all of the rain the fell during 2018 and 2019, our cattle have had the challenge of wading through a foot of mucky mud to get to and from the water fountain. We planned on filling the gap between our two concrete pads during the summer of 2018 but the weather never cooperated. 2019 presented it’s challenges as well. We prepped the area, during a short dry spell, in October, by removing mud down to solid ground but then it rained and filled the hole with a foot plus of water. We were able to pump some of the water out but managed to plug up two different pumps with the thick muddy water. Eventually enough water was removed to place a rock foundation in the bottom and cover that with gravel to prep for the cement. The weather cooperated and concrete was finally poured. I’m happy to report the the steers and the farmers appreciate the final result.

A close call!

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

There’s nothing like a good storm to make you thankful for your current situation. With rain and wet being the theme of spring and early summer, it wasn’t a real surprise to have a severe storm pop up. What was the surprise was how small of an area was affected, the amount of damage in that area and that the tornado passed by about 1 mile to the north of us.

Continue reading →

Weed Control and Fertilization

By | | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

With the late planting start, we were unable to achieve good weed control with our vertical till machine on some fields. The weeds were larger than 3″ and they just slipped through without being fully uprooted. On a couple of fields we had to use a pass with chemical to know out the weeds to give the soybeans a good start without competition.

Continue reading →

Planting 2019

By | | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

It’s been a long crop year. I’m finally getting around to posting after the most trying crop year of my farming career! 2018 ended with a lot of moisture in the ground. Spring 2018 brought a lot more snow and then unending rain. We did get our crop in the ground but not in a timely manner. We did manage to get our corn test plot planted during one narrow window of opportunity.

Planting 2019

Spring 2019 – Fire, Rain and Mud!

By | |
Leave a comment

Already in late winter we were preparing for a late and wet spring. Little did we know how late and wet it would be! While we dealt with weather delays we did what we could do to take care of preparing fields. That included burning off corn stalks in areas that drifted into think mats around water holes. It is nearly impossible to plant through these and if planting succeeds, the crop will struggle.

  • Rusting culvert created a gully.

And then, when we were able to get moving in the field, we buried the tillage tool more than once. Most of the time we could get it our ourselves but we did need to call on a couple neighbors, with larger tractors, to help us out a couple of times.

We needed the neighbors quad track to pull this out. A few hours later, we could work through it.

Shop projects – spring 2019

By | | , , ,
Leave a comment

After harvest our machinery gets cleaned and inspected with a list of what needs to be done to ready it for the next crop year. This list gets prioritized into winter and summer projects. This winter seemed to be busier than usual. Not only did we spend way too much time moving snow but the pre-spring project list was longer than usual.

Every fall the air conditioner condenser, on our semi tractor that actually has a working AC, fills up with bees wing from all the corn chaff flying around. As you can see in these images, it’s rather nasty and in a very difficult area to see. This means blindly cleaning and using a phone to take these photos to monitor the progress.

Continue reading →