Zandee Farms: 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.