Rain

The record books will not show the small drought we experienced in early to late summer. We had near record rainfall through early May and then the tap went dry. Very dry. We had everything watered by mid to late July and then scurried away on vacation. The plan was to return and continue pumping water after the trip. We were in Garden City Ks the first night and on rising we called home and were informed that thursday night the 19th of August it rained 1.25" back home. On the following thursday another 1.30". Then 2.25" on the 7th of this month and then .90" on the 10th and now 1.5 this afternoon the 12th. A total of 7.2" in 24 days. It has begun to rain easily. If this rain continues to fall, I'm going to get way behind on my irrigating.
I put this up in an effort to document this for my future reference. No other reason.
Nothing can make, or for that matter ruin a farmers vacation quicker than the news that it rained back home. If rain is needed, the news will make you float on air for a few days and no one can charge you enough for gas or a hotel room to ruin that giddy feeling.
If you don't need the rain, and it rains a lot doing damage to your crop, the same news can make you want to fly home and have the family bring the car.
Farming is alluring to some because you are your own boss. That's true. That just means instead of asking someone else what they think, you have to make the everyday decisions from what is ricocheting around in your head. Is it too wet to till the soil? To dry? Which implement should I use? Which tractor? How am I going to pay for that? Should I start irrigating?
To the person with no farm experience, it would appear to be pretty complicated. Experience answers most of your questions for you. It could take an hour to explain why you did something a certain way. But the decision may not have been made by reasoning but rather by remembering how much trouble you caused by doing it the wrong way last time..
Farming boils down to be just like a lot of other occupations. You'll do okay if you can pay attention, and remember your mistakes. You may remember my explanation of education. Education is the method we've developed for keeping track of the mistakes.

We're Back!

A vicious rumor circulated thru the crowd at the wedding. There reportedly wasn't going to be any cake at the reception.
It was the cause of much consternation.










Speculation was brought to an end when the rumor was found to be untrue. It caused one wedding patron to shout... "Hey guys, there's going to be two kinds of cake and one is going to be my favorite, CHOCOLATE!!"




Having been granted traveling mercies we have returned to the farm. We attended a family reunion in Albuquerque and the wedding of Ralph and Chars daughter in Denver.
The same phenomenon recurred at the reunion as last time. Everyone appears to have aged a bit since two years ago, except Marilyn and I. We played some golf courses that were clearly over my head, ate salsa at every meal and told and retold family stories. A delightful time and a good reason to get together.
The wedding was delightful. We got to repay the Campbells for some of the help they've been to us over the years. We did some cooking, entertaining, and generally had a great time. The wedding was a lovely garden affair and the reception was in a hall next to the garden. All was nicely done and nothing was overblown. I'll leave most of the wedding news to Ralph. If he's too stingy with the pics...I'll have to get involved.
I'm looking forward to the next time we can get together with the Campbells.
The promised date for Blogstock '08 will have to wait a bit. Ralph is thinking the 4Th of July and I'm not sure. We just didn't have time to visit about that.
We had 1.25" of rain the night after we left and another 1.30" of rain the night we got home. If this rain keeps up I'll never get done irrigating.
I have often warned my kids to be careful not to pay too much for gas when pulling off of the Interstate in a remote area. On the way home Thursday we got off of the interstate at Cozad, NE. The BP station had $3.02 on their sign for 10% ethanol. Thinking this to be in line with what I had seen in Denver, we pulled in. The cheapest grade at the pump was $3.59!! I was mad and cancelled the transaction. We went 2 blocks further to the only other station at that interchange and paid $3.08. I had often seen the 50 cent range between stations before, but running a deceptive sign was stooping to a new low.
The weeds have responded to the recent rains quite well. If anyone is looking for me I'll be running my 8 horse, two wheeled string trimmer. Probably out around the grain bins. I'll stop by your blog soon. Come visit, we'll bake a cake.

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.