Thursday, May 30, 2013

The Deluge Carries On

The rain has continued to fall over the last 7 days on and off again and our saturation status stays the same.  More heavy rain is forecast tonight and tomorrow and a brief respite possibly over the weekend with another storm system forecast to impact us by next Tuesday.  It doesn't look for prospects of much more corn or soybeans getting planted in Winnebago County until after the 10th of June at this point in my opinion.

Our fields around Buffalo Center have all emerged and look good considering they are all corn on corn and have endured this much moisture over the course of the last 10 days.  Stands appear to be fairly even an I'm pleased with how our planter and trash whippers handled the challenge of planting into corn on corn.  We had one farm that Dad decided to move the trash whippers up as he was worried we were moving too much dirt and getting wet dirt sticking to the planter wheels.  I was pretty concerned that he had left too much trash on the strips but even that farm looks relatively good considering the lack of heat  and sunshine that the crops have had while they've emerged over the last week.  I chose to set the whippers back down when I took over planting and from the road it seems to have made a positive difference.  We were able to get our pre-emerge burndown on all those farms and that appears to have worked well as we have virtually nothing coming for weeds yet.  We've had plenty of moisture to activate our Verdict so we should have smooth sailing on those fields for few weeks before we need to come in and spray again and do some side dressing.

Our farms east of Thompson are a completely different story.  They've probably received 4-6 inches more rain over the last 12 days than our farms around Buffalo Center.  The erosion problems in the strips get worse with every rainfall event.  We met with the crop insurance adjuster on my farm on Saturday morning to see about replanting and he didn't get out of his pickup to make the decision that he would cover a replant on the whole farm if necessary.  His exact words were as he rolled down the window, "boy you sure got a mess here."  All I could do was laugh.  After he left I walked around the farm in the rain for a while to try to get a handle on the flatter ground how the corn was coming up and there wasn't much there.

I'm working this week to understand my crop insurance options in regards to letting that field stand as is and having to look at a complete train wreck for the rest of the summer or tear it up and plant it to beans by the time it dries up hopefully in mid-June.  It's not a fun solution either way.

I went to the field again last night to try to ascertain how much stand loss I may have and I can honestly say I have never seen such widespread un-emerged corn in a field from over-saturation.  I have 5-10% at most of the field that has emerged.  Where it has emerged, it looks awesome.  The other 90-95% of the farm has nothing other than seeds sitting in muck.  Some of the seeds have sprouted, some of them have not.  The seeds are all still firm and don't look like they are rotting yet but with the wet forecast I don't have much faith that they will make it with how saturated it is.  Other than my neighbor to the north who planted ahead of the snow, everyone else who planted the same day around me has terrible stands of emerged corn as well.  It will be really interesting to see how that area between Forest City and Thompson comes out of this deal as there is a huge swath of acres that look terrible right now.  Here are some pics and videos that I shot last night that somewhat capture what things look like.  With the forecast being what it is I don't expect things to change much over the next week.  Serenity now... Pabst Blue Ribbon later.


What 90% of the farm looks like-no emergence

Small streak of what the field would like without rain over a tile line-only about 15 ft wide

My field after nearly 12" of rain in 11 days.  An inch a day keeps the corn away.

Neighbor's field right next door who planted before 12" of snow.  Apply salt directly to wound.

8 inch trowel in the eroded slot.  TWSS

Corn seed growing on the surface in eroded strip

Erosion dumped on headland


Monday, May 20, 2013

A Slice of Humble Pie Chased With 6 Inches of Rain

It's been an interesting week.  We started planting corn last Saturday and were able to finish up Thursday night right before the rain.  I'll have more details in another post about my thoughts on how planting went.  Today's post is about the ramifications of what happened when my farm received nearly 5 inches of rain in a few hours last Friday morning when it had just been planted 18 hours before.  The result was not good.

I woke up last Friday morning feeling great that I had got the corn in before the rain came.  I had about 3 inches at our house so I got up early and drove around to look at some of Dad's farms and they all looked good with minimal water standing.  I went to work assuming that our farms over east of Thompson fared just fine as well until I heard on the radio on the way to work that areas between Thompson and Forest City had received 4-5 inches of rain.  I called Dad and asked him to go look at those farms on his way to State Track in Des Moines that day and when he called me to report in all he said was, "its not good."

My 80 of corn had eroded terribly from the heavy rain to the point where the water washed out my planted strips along with the seed on several hillsides.  The wind mill road that goes across the farm had water run across so violently that it washed the rock out into the field about 150 feet.  I have several acres underwater from ponding as well.   Over the course of the weekend received almost another 2 inches of rain and more washing and ponding has occurred.  It is a mess.  I just got back from looking at it now for the 2nd time and it's pretty disheartening.

Here's some photos of what things look like from the damage.

Erosion going over my fence line

Corn seed with no dirt and coleoptile shoot emerged

Hillside with eroded strips

Strip eroded to the point the seed is washed away down the hill

The remnants of my end rows that now resemble an alluvial fan

Windmill road rock washed out on to the field
This is a difficult situation to try to figure out what the right decision is for how to proceed.  There are several things working against me with the wet forecast and time being the 2 biggest factors at this point.  I also have corn rows that are completely washed away, corn that is shallow planted from the topsoil eroding off, corn submerged by water, corn buried by 12" of sediment in places, corn buried by 6" of rock, an EQUIP contract that states I can't perform full width tillage to try to smooth out the eroded ruts in the field, I've likely lost my nitrogen and sulfur I applied to the surface of the field with the planter,  I have no pre-emerge herbicide applied to the field and the herbicide I have purchased can't be applied on emerged corn and I have corn that is now emerged.  All in all, mother nature has me by the short hairs and pulling me in close to feel the burn.

As of today my plan is to wait until Thursday as I think the corn should be up by then and evaluate just how bad of stand I have and then try to formulate a plan from there assuming that the weather cooperates...unfortunately there is another major storm system scheduled for next weekend making any plans of reclamation likely a moot point.  The good news is that I have Federal Crop Insurance purchased which helps mitigate the financial risk I'm exposed to.  The bad news is that I don't farm for receiving Federal Crop payouts; I farm to grow things and sell a product and right now this setback is about as deflating to my mental status and farming pride as it gets.

I'm not alone...I have lots of neighbors with ponds in that area and severe erosion.  It does seem though that the strip till system was impacted worse in having rows washed away than conventionally tilled fields did. While my field likely had less total erosion come off of it, the erosion energy that did occur was focused down the loose strips instead of across the entire field surface.

I don't know that I'm in a position to say I've learned anything yet as it's likely to early to discern much out of the crap hole I've found myself in, but I do have a few ideas of what may have elevated the problems I currently have.  I'll try to share them when I see things play out over the next few weeks.  Until then...best of luck to all those impacted by the wet conditions and stay safe!




Thursday, May 9, 2013

Holes in the ground


I went out to check fields last night to see if we were getting any closer to planting and found my favorite tiler  hanging out underneath a corn cob.  It's really satisfying to walk out and see the amount of worm holes in our fields.  All these holes serve as natural drainage and air ducts into the soil system that can help dry things out quicker when you're caught in a wet spring like this one.

Our strips look to be in really good shape and although in between the rows it is still pretty wet underneath the residue, the soil in the strip is extremely mellow with tons of air space and is much drier.  If we wanted to push it we could be planting especially on our tiled fields.  My employer actually planted a field 2 nights ago(5 days after 10" of snow) that was fall strip till on pattern tile when no one else around could go.  It was a little mucky underneath but as long as they kept the planter on the strips and not in between the strips, it worked pretty good.  I think that we are setup for an advantage where we will just be going out and planting rather than working the ground when it is marginally wet.  Time will tell.

The weather forecast looks good for the next 6 days so I'm hopeful that we can get rolling by this weekend and be going in good conditions and not pushing it too much.  My guess is that my wife's Mother's Day brunch might have to be at about 5 AM if things are fit to be planting on Sunday.  Tis the season.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Getting That Cold Wet Spring I Had Wished For

It looks pretty likely that my last post will get a pretty good test for the spring of 2013.  Our farms early last week were ready to plant but we held back from putting seed in the ground as we were afraid of a cold snap and maybe a few inches of snow that were forecast.  Well the forecast was wrong and we got nearly a foot of snow in Winnebago County between May 1-May 2nd.  As I type this morning we still have roughly 4-6" of snow to melt off the fields before we can start drying out and working towards getting back in the field.  I was very close to pulling the trigger and planting last Sunday and Monday as our strips we're in great shape but am really glad we were conservative and didn't roll.  With the very poor cold germ scores of the seed corn this year, I'm glad it's still in the bag and not in the wet ground this morning at 38 degrees.  It will be really interesting to see how the corn that did get planted in my neighborhood will emerge through this stress.

Instead of planting last weekend, we took time to take the planter out and test out the systems to make sure the new additions to the planter along with the existing systems were working well so that when we do go the field we can hit the ground running.  We've added new Yetter Floating Shark Tooth row cleaners as well as 0x2 placement tubes for applying 28% and ATS behind our closing wheels and drag chains to level the furrow and cover our liquid product.

I'm glad we tested things because we had issues with about every system.  Our RTK system wasn't working, our trash whippers were plowing way too much dirt, our starter pump wasn't pumping and our Raven controller that controls our 28% wasn't functioning either.  Thankfully as we went through each problem there was a relatively easy fix for each of them and by late in the afternoon we pretty much we're ready to plant corn.  That's one of the downfalls of what we're doing is that there is a lot of systems on one pass across the field to manage and keep operating well.  You have to have patience and be able to adapt when you get thrown a monkey wrench.

Here's some pictures of our activities from last Sunday.






I'm excited for the challenge that is going to come in the next few weeks trying to get the 2013 crop in and putting our strip till to the test in a wet season.  From what I saw of the condition of our strips last weekend and how well they were drying out, I'm encouraged.  Hopefully by next weekend the weather will have straightened out and we can get some things done.  It's not panic time yet but seeing a picture like this on May 2nd at your house makes a guy a little bit itchy.  


If you're looking for some interesting videos to watch while the snow melts, here's some good ones that I've enjoyed from Clay Mitchell, Ray Archuletta and Matt Helmers at Iowa State that talk about the benefits of reducing tillage and paying attention to soil health.

Clay Mitchell lecture at ISU

Clay Mitchell at Chicago Ideas Week

Matt Helmers ISU Rainfall Simulator

Ray Archuletta Slake Test on Soil