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.
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Erosion going over my fence line |
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Corn seed with no dirt and coleoptile shoot emerged |
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Hillside with eroded strips |
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Strip eroded to the point the seed is washed away down the hill |
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The remnants of my end rows that now resemble an alluvial fan |
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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!