Row Stalker

Finally getting around to posting pictures of our Row Stalker.  As you can see there are two disc per row that run against each other. They cut off the root ball from the previous year and throw it out of the way. This machine runs best at high speeds, 10-15 mph. Usually our teenage workers get to run this as they love the speed.

We finished planting soybeans May 17 followed by our four varieties ornamental popcorn and two varieties of broom corn. This is in addition to the three varieties of large Indian corn that were planted earlier.

I'll have another blog about this hobby gone bad later as they start to grow.

We did receive a light rain the evening of May 17 (0.65") and then a good soaking rain May 24-25 (3.25"). Now we need some sunshine.

Planting 2011

I finally started planting corn on Thursday, April 28. It took all afternoon to get the planter and tractor all hooked up and all the wires and hoses in the right places. One hang up was the tractor guidance system was not talking to the planter module. Technology is great when it works, a pain when it doesn't.

My Trimble guidance system is quite busy during planting. It steers the tractor, runs and controls a fertilizer injection pump, runs and controls the seed drive, turns row clutches on and off and logs everything on a data card. The seed population is adjusted automatically to match a prescription that I made. I plant more seeds per acre on the high yielding ground and fewer seeds on the lower yielding ground. Also some hybrids like high populations and some hybrids like lower populations.

The row clutches are new this year. They help cut seed costs and raise yields by not double planting on the ends or edges of fields. I plant one pass or two on the bottom of most fields first. When I plant the field, the guidance system knows when I cross into what was already planted and shuts the rows off. When all are off I can lift out of the ground and turn around. On square fields this is not a big deal. I could come pretty close by hand. The real benefit comes on the many odd shaped fields that I farm. Sometimes one side of the planter is off for several yards before the other side is done planting.

Planting into soybean stubble.

These are some of the pictures I've taken this year planting corn. The first two are ridge-planting into a field that was soybeans last year. These fields are very mellow and we plant directly on the ridge from last year with no other tillage. 

Planting into soybean stubble.

After Row Stalking, before planting.

Planting on the old corn ridge.

  The next two are ridge-planting into a field that was corn last year and will be again this year. I am on a corn-corn-soybean rotation on most of our fields. Before the planter we ran a machine called a Row Stalker. I can't find any photos in our files (I know they are there somewhere), but I will post them as soon as I can get some new shots. The Row Stalker has two discs that run against each other and they cut off the top 2 inches of the ridge left from last year. This cuts off the root balls from last year's corn. Those roots are very tough and I need to get them out of the way for this years corn crop. I then plant on the ridge.

Planting into alfalfa sod.

The picture on the right is no-till planting into an alfalfa field that has been sprayed with a herbicide to kill the alfalfa. We used to use several tillage passes to break up the field, which took a lot of diesel fuel and dried out the soil. This method works much better.

I should be half done planting corn by Monday evening. Most of our fields are now dry enough to plant, although we did find a few wet spots Saturday.

Planting!!

Finally started planting on April 28. Still too wet in some fields. This is ridge planted into soybean stubble without any other tillage.

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Rain/snow, is spring coming?

Friday we received 1.6 inches of precip. mostly as rain, but also had 4 inches of wet slushy snow. Plus we has 40-50 mph winds all day. It all melted by 4pm but was very nasty at 8 am. C slid into the ditch driving to school, as did several of her rural classmates. The slush and the 50 mph winds were not good to the younger drivers.

Hopefully that will be the last blast of winter. I'm ready for spring and planting crops!!

Spring Farm Work

It's raining outside so I am catching up in the office today, which includes writing this post. I have pushed this off for too long.

We ridge plant all of our crops, which means that we do no tillage in the spring. We do have other tasks to keep us busy though. First we apply dry fertilizer to the fields. We only apply what each field needs, based on soil fertility test done last fall by our agronomist. When we apply the fertilizer rate to an entire field I use a machine that looks much like a lawn fertilizer spreader. The nutrients we mostly apply with dry fertilizer is phosphorus, potassium, sulfur and zinc. Most of our nitrogen fertilizer is applied as a liquid, and most of that is put on during the growing season.

Many of our fields have been grid sampled, where our agronomist takes separate soil samples from small squares inside of the entire field. They may end up with 30-40 different soil fertility tests per field. Then they prescribe different amounts of fertilizer to each area. On these fields I hire our local coop to apply the dry fertilizer since they have the machine that can vary the dry fertilizer rates as they drive across the field. This saves money, fertilizer and improves yields; a win, win, win.

The next step for us is to shred the corn stalks left from last year. We do rent our corn stalks to a neighbor with cows to graze during the winter.  The cows do eat quite a bit of the refuse left from last year's crop, but they do not eat the corn stalks. They need to be chopped up to make cultivating easier later in the year. We use a Rhino shredder that shreds 6 rows at a time.

Then we spray all of our fields with a herbicide package to kill winter annuals (dandelion, tansymustard, field pennycress and others) and stop early sprouting spring weeds. On fields going to corn we spray the herbicide mixture with a base of 32% liquid nitrogen. This heats up the herbicide mix (works faster) and gives the soon to be planted corn an early boost. Our sprayer covers 20 rows at a time and is 60 feet wide. Turning on ends of fields can be tricky if you don't watch what you are doing.

We use a Trimble guidance computer on all our tractors. This is a screenshot of me spraying a field. It keeps the tractor and sprayer on the right path and eliminates overlap. It also controls how much spray is going on the field. If I speed up or slow down it resets the valves so I put on exactly what I want, in this case, 15 gallons per acre (upper center of screen). It also turns the spray boom on and off on the ends, and if the field has a diagonal end it turns them on and off in sequence to avoid any more overlap than necessary.


That's it for today. When I start planting I'll write about that.

Lexington Area Farm Family of the Year

In recognition of National Ag Week for the past 31 years the Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce has a banquet for area farmer and ranchers. At the banquet they honor the Ag Employee of the Year, Agri-Service of the Year and the highlight is the Farm Family of the Year.

For 2011 they honored the Max & Theresa McFarland family as the Farm Family of the Year. Their farm is a little different than what we are used to in central Nebraska, they raise grapes and run Mac's Creek Winery & Vineyard. They purchased an acreage north of Lexington in 1999 and planted their first vines in 2000. The first harvest was in 2002 and by 2003 they had won three bronze medals at the Florida State Fair International Wine Competition.

Now they are winning gold and double gold medals at competitions all over the United States, competing against wines from all over the world. Quite an accomplishment for such a short time.

They also have a wonderful tasting room that is open most days in the summers and weekends in the winter. Our family has been there for family reunions and anniversaries. They have developed quite a reputation for their theme parties and their Friday with Friends from 5-9 p.m. is very popular with locals and out-of-towners alike.

If you are ever in or around Lexington it would be worth your while to stop off at Mac's Creek Winery & Vineyard. Their webpage is http://www.macscreekvineyards.com/

God and the locked bathroom

Many of you know that our youngest daughter C is a senior starter on our girls basketball team. They made it to the State Tournament this year for the first time in ten years by beating arch-rival Holdrege in the District finals. When the state brackets came out there was Lexington, the #3 seed and our opponent was . . . Holdrege, again, who made it in as a wildcard.

They played what one reporter called an epic game late Thursday night. Each team had a ten point lead only to see it evaporate. Lexington took the lead with a three-point jumper with 25 seconds left. Holdrege retook the lead with a shot with 3.8 seconds left. Lex got a half court shot off at the buzzer, but fell short to lose by 1 point. Bummer.

God's Life Lesson #1: Sometimes the answer is "No, your basketball season is over."

There is no consolation at this point for daughter C that she played the best game of her career that night, scoring a career high 12 points (she is not the scorer of the team), grabbing bunches of rebounds and keeping the lead scorer for Holdrege under 10 points.

What most of you do not know is the story of the rest of the night and further proof that God knows what we need and when we need it.

The dejected girls left Devaney at 11 p.m. for the Holiday Inn to shower and eat. A veritable smorgasbord was set up in Coach's room with the two LARGE boxes of food and two baskets of fruit that were donated for the team to travel to Lincoln with. The girls were moving in and out of Coach's room as they showered and ate.

A team member rushed in and announced "X is locked in the bathroom!!" (Name withheld for many reasons.) The coach's wife, Peg, who is one of the gentlest and calmest souls on this earth went to see if she could talk #1 through unlocking the door. It turned out that she had not locked the door, she merely closed the door and the mechanism broke inside the door.

Hotel maintenance was called and while they were arriving the night manager tried his luck. He slid a hotel keycard under the door and had X try to slip it in the frame to push the latch back, no luck They tried a couple of other things and gave up.

By this time ALL the team was in her room to watch and support X in her perils. You must know this is a team that really gets the team approach. They win as a team and they lose as a team. There are no prima donas on this team. However, if there was a girl who occasionally got over excited in a game and had to get cooled down, it was X.

The seniors who are leaving in a week on a senior trip to Washington D.C. recalled the warnings from their trip sponsor about last year's trip when girls from another school who got locked in their hotel room and had to have a hole cut in the hotel wall to get them out.

The team started to speculate on what type of maintenance man would show up, the large overweight kind who couldn't get down, or maybe one with the standard plumber butt crack. When he did show up he was a normal body size, but when he knelt down to look at the door lock, there IT was. The girls started laughing, but luckily the girl inside was laughing too and he thought they were laughing at her.

He tried a few more ideas, but finally decided he had to cut off the outside door handle to get at the lock mechanism inside the door. Unfortunately this was a solid steel door, so they couldn't just break it down. So at midnight the maintenance man is using a hammer and chisel to break off the door handle. I can't imagine how loud that would have been, especially with a room full of girls watching and giggling.

He eventually got the outside handle off and had X pull off the inside handle. One of the girls remarked "Now we can see you." Of course like any high school girl she didn't take a stitch of clothing into the bathroom with her and she was only wrapped up in a towel. She went screeching into the tub and pulled the shower curtain. The maintenance man told her to calm down, he was married and had girls of his own and had seen everything, X replied that he hadn't seen her.

It then took him quite a bit more time before he was finally able to get the latch pulled out of the door frame and released X from her bathroom prison at 1:10 a.m. A cheer went up and X peeked around the shower curtain to see them all there. And both of them saw the cameras and smartphones recording the entire event. He remarked "I suppose this will be on YouTube." The girls replied it was already on Facebook. They were uploading it as they went along.

God's Life Lesson #2: He knows what you need and when you need it. The pain and frustration of the one point loss was washed away, at least for awhile. Years from now when the girls look back on the State Tournament experience they won't remember the heartbreak loss as much as X locked in the bathroom.

God Is Great!!