We've Got Trouble!

Right here in River City. We've got Pool(s)...of water. Planting season was late this year because of the cold weather which kept soil temperatures to a minimum and then wet cold weather set in.

We were already saturated but had gotten in to work and plant the better, well drained ground and could see the light at the end of the tunnel when it began raining last Thursday afternoon. I planted thru part of the all-afternoon mist but the mud finally began building up on the gauge wheels.

That will always bring planting to a stop. The gauge wheels are the big, flat wheels that run on either side of each row. Their job is to keep the seed at the correct depth. If they get chunks of mud starting to build, they will do an uneven job of planting putting some kernels at the correct depth and others on top of the ground.

So I quit mid afternoon on Thursday. It rained that night, and the next day and night and day and night. Add infinity. A total of 3.8 inches at our place. You must understand that I live on the Missouri River bottom ground. We are some 9 miles from the town and to get there

must traverse some not very well drained farmland. This owing to the fact that the river is close and the high water level there is not that much lower than than the adjacent land. AND since water tends to run down hill... we must wait for the upstream rivers to drain into the Muddy Mo before our tributaries begin their turn to drain.

On our way to church this morning we snapped these pics. The top one is of U.S Highway 75 (it runs nearly border to border, north and south in this country) about 2 miles south of Tekamah.



The second is of that dusty county road I showed you last fall. The third shows the field I was planting when I got rained out and if you look closely or click on the pic you'll see my planter and tractor sitting there in the mud. The last is of the corn field along our lane. In all of these pics the water is not in a lake but rather sitting on normally productive farm ground.

This time of year we would hope to have been done with planting. When you get rained out you are upset at not being able to get it planted. As you can guess planting is the most important of our jobs as farmers because without this completed in a timely fashion, our year is a failure. As you sow... well you know.

Now we have reached a reversal in conventional thinking. Seeds sitting under water in cold mud are probably not better off than the dry seeds still in the shed. The dry, unplanted ones at least won't rot. By the time this ground dries enough for planting again, we will have begun to loose yield potential because of late planting. At the rate of about one bushel per acre per day past oh say, May 15Th. And we will also likely go thru the added expense of replanting some of that already planted.

But this is why I prefer to farm. I would just hate forking over a bunch of Income Tax money to the IRS every year.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, it just started raining again.