Walking In the Furrow
Hope everyone had a safe July Fourth weekend, and had the opportunity to spend some time with family and friends. I enjoyed my fireworks from the comfort of an air-conditioned John Deere 5083E tractor that I was trying out from Greenmark in Plymouth.
Challenging days of extreme heat and humidity were amazing for baling. Three of the days we had a real feel of 104 degrees, but we pushed on and continued making hay, cutting wheat and baling straw. The days were long and the nights were short, but we managed to get all the second cutting of hay and straw baled in seven days. I also clipped wheat stubbles, then raked and baled that, too.
I was thankful that my neighbors chose not to shoot fireworks off at their homes located directly across from my wheat fields. The lack of rain has left ground conditions extremely dry. A busy neighbor of mine was able to cut my 26 acres of wheat with his John Deere 9600 combine. I like a cylinder machine for wheat, versus one with the rotor, because a rotor combine chews the straw up too much and doesn't leave much to bale. Because the swath of straw was too wide for the baler, I raked the straw so it would feed into the baler more easily without leaving remnants of straw throughout the field.
My soft, red winter wheat averaged 66 bushels to the acre, and the moisture was between 13.4 and 14.5 percent. The fungicide must have worked, as there was no sign of vomitoxin in the wheat samples. We baled the straw in small and large squares and also 4-by-5 round bales.
The month of July is expected to be hot and steamy. I was thankful we were able to harvest the wheat without having a hail storm or high winds prior to cutting it. I tried to line someone up with a semi, to decrease my chances of blowing wagon tires on the hot, bubbled up blacktop roads, but everyone had the same idea—to cut wheat!
Over 30 years ago, there were grain terminals and feed elevators in just about every farming community. Those days are behind us now, but fortunately we still have Cargill in LaPaz. It is only three miles away and usually it is easy to get in and out in a short time. Our next closest grain terminal is Frick Services in Wyatt or Wakarusa Nutritional Services, which usually takes around an hour to reach with tractor and wagons.
I tried every trick in the book to make it rain, and, of course, some of my neighbors received inches or tenths. We watched it miss us by less than a half mile two days in a row. The heavy dew at night is the only thing keeping the crops alive and the corn continues to roll up terribly each day. There was rain visible in the dark clouds to the west a couple times and lightning that lit up the sky. It appeared to be packing some punch, but all we got was the wind and a few sprinkles. Each time thunderstorms neared, it would stir up quite a dust storm in the field and around farm buildings.
Blueberries looked beautiful this year. The sparrows ate all of ours before they even began turning blue. Tillman Blueberry Farm in LaPaz, formally Pertics, still has already picked or the U-pick option, so I won't have to miss out on a piece of blueberry pie or cobbler.