Walking in the Furrow
The day after Easter was a sure sign that old man winter wanted to make another appearance and give us a chance to build another snowman. The forecast was for a light dusting of snow, but that quickly turned into 3 inches of wet packing snow. But as I write this column, I am listening to the birds and the spring peeper frogs chirping away outside my office window. The wheat and hay fields continue to green up and the mosquitoes are hatching out, too.
Well, it's the last week of April and I'm guessing by now there's already some corn and soybeans in the ground across Indiana. I'm hopeful by the time you read this, I will have had an opportunity to resume more of my spring tillage. The soil is still too wet and the temperature is on the cooler side, so I will shy away from planting anything until after Mother's Day. It's too early to see what this year will be like compared to other years in the past, but usually one extreme is followed by another.
Once the weather breaks, it will be a shotgun start for not only farmers, but for the fertilizer and chemical suppliers, too. It will be a race to keep up with the ongoing demand for inputs while covering thousands of acres throughout the growing season. I'm looking forward to measuring my tractor therapy time in acres rather than hours, as I turn circles for days on end preparing the seedbed for planting, baling hay and harvesting the crops of 2022. On the flipside of the coin, we can only hope and pray for another bountiful harvest to cover the expensive crop inputs we have laid out this year.
Until last fall, I had never attended a hay auction as a seller on a weekly basis, but with the abundance of dry hay and straw I had in the barn plus multiple tubes of wrapped hay, I knew I had to find an additional market to make room for my new hay crop this year. A few auctions a week was just what I need to make the winter months fly by quickly. Since we are unaware of what pests lie ahead, we can only pray the armyworms did not survive the winter or find their way back to Indiana. Maybe with a little luck we can outsmart Mother Nature, too, and bale up another five cuttings of excellent hay without rain again.
As the availability and sticker shock of fertilizer looms over many of us in the month ahead, I still plan to keep my original plans of how many acres will be planted to corn, soybeans and alfalfa. The historical prices for commodities will weigh in on how many acres of wheat I feel are worthy of keeping and what will be plowed down. The quality of wheat that remains good to excellent after being planted last fall is in the bracket of 19 percent according to AgDay TV. The quality of wheat coming in at less than 25 percent, should be a wake up call to consumers that food costs are gonna rise sharply.
While it is hard to imagine feast or famine in our lives, we must make adjustments and find alternative products to grow healthy and productive crops when the cost outweighs the profit margin.