Irrigation Season on Our Farm.
Water flowing down a row on our gravity irrigated fields
It has been a very busy summer here as we have been in one of the worst droughts I have seen. We have caught a few timely rains here that other areas of the state have not. Our non-irrigated corn is just barely hanging on. We will have a crop from it, but it will be less than expected. Our irrigated fields look great and yield projections for those will most likely be record yields the way it looks now as we are way ahead on Growing Degree Units and have very minimal disease and insect pressure.
The popcorn looks good this year as do all of the soybeans also. I have included a few pictures of gravity irrigation and pictures of the crops to catch you all up with what is going on. Hope to get back to posting a little more often, but mother nature and kids activities dictate my free time this time of year.
a pipeline on one of our gravity irrigated fields. The water flows through the pipe and out individual gates for every row that we open manually. It is a labor intensive irrigation process.
This is the lower end of the field that the water flows to and we check to make sure the rows flow through to the end.
We are thankful to have the irrigation on our farms as much of this country’s ag producers are not so fortunate!
Our corn is nearing roasting ear stage and it looks like harvest will be around two weeks early this year.
This is a book we use to keep track of the rows that water reaches the end. This particular field has over 600 rows.
Our Farm Week In Pictures 11/6/2011
Well, we finished up harvest a little over a week ago and it has been a blur of activity since then. We are shredding stalks on the gravity irrigated fields, discing up our organic quarter to return it to conventional production, drying grain in the bins to prepare the crop for winter storage, cleaning up equipment, winterizing equipment, storing equipment in the building for the winter, purchasing and making commitments for next years crop inputs, planning for next years crop and meeting with our seed customers to get next years orders.
Below are a few pictures to get you caught up on our farm happenings.
This is us harvesting our NET plot which is an experimental corn plot with all of the newest genetics either entering full production, or still in the experimental stage. These hybrids are compared against current hybrids both in our line-up and competitive companies. Each hybrid has four rows spaced 30 inches and 400 feet long. We plant the corn at a population of 34,000 plants per acre.
This is our sprayer we purchased recently to do all of our own spraying. We had previously done all of our own and spent two years having it commercially done by someone else. I am looking forward to getting to run this machine.
My son getting his four wheeler fix for the week shortly before we started harvest.
End of the first day of hunting at the Korkow Rodeos Ranch near Pierre, SD. I make this trip annually. Beautiful country and a few days of unplugging from technology as cell phones do not work there for the most part.
Our Farm Week In Pictures 10-6-2011
We have been very busy around here. Harvest is in full swing. We will finish with soybeans by tomorrow and switch to corn. The yields on the soybeans have been very good, but there are some larger varietal differences than I would like to see. Sounds like a front moving in will bring rain by Friday evening and we will head to Lincoln Saturday to watch the Huskers play Ohio State. We did get in a few days of goofing around before we got into harvest though.
Sailing with my Uncle Gary at Lake Hastings. The kids really enjoyed it and learned a lot about sailing.
Shooting pop cans with the bb gun a couple days before harvest started
My son and some of his buddies having a refreshment on the shop deck after an afternoon shooting pop cans with the bb gun. Shooting cans with 3 boys is a great chance to teach safety with firearms to prepare them for hunting season.
Area that the sprayer missed. What a mess.
Doing some welding on the flex head we use to harvest soybeans. It is an older head and requires quite a bit on maintenance and fixing during harvest
Farm Week In Pictures 7/7/2011
THis is
A picture on the ladder of the combine
This is a picture of our kids and Kristi’s brother’s son as he got to explore the farm yesterday. They live in the city and this was his first chance to come to the farm for a tractor ride, explore the combine, and take a ride in the Rangers
Ranger Rides
Taking a ride in the ranger on our farm
Corn growing quickly here.
The corn is growing quickly here and has hidden the pivot tires from view. We are around 10 days away from tasseling. The sweetcorn we planted tasseled a few days ago here.
Soybeans
Soybeans almost canopying the row. These soybeans are planted in 30 inch rows.
Growing Your Own Food
Sometimes I think Farmers get a bad rap and are accused of being
against the whole locavore, grow your own food movement. I personally do not think anything could be further from the truth. Fact is that Farmers like to grow
things. I know, ironic isn’t it, a farmer likes to get down and plant things in the dirt, nurture it, and then eat it.
We have had a garden as long as I can remember and will always continue to do so. I remember as a kid helping plant the garden and eventually, it became my little farm as I grew up. I have always loved having fresh vegetable to eat, I just wish there w
as a way to grow them in the winter when the wind chill is -20. See, I am a whateverisavailablethatisgoodforyouavore. I grow the garden in the summer and my wife sometimes goes to the local farmers market, then in the winter I rely on the southern and western US to grow the vegetables and fruits that we enjoy during that time of year.
So, since we are talking about gardening and growing your own food, what have you done this year to grow your own food? In our garden this year we have 4 varieties of tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, green beans, yellow waxy beans, asparagus, broccoli, pickling cucumbers, burpless cucumbers, acorn squash, butternut squash, butttercup squash, zucchini, yellow zucchini, gourds, pumpkins, and some sweetcorn. Let us know what you have growing and why you grow it. What do you do in the months you don’t have fresh vegetables and fruit to pick? By all means, during theses months that the farmers market are open, go for it and go local. In the middle of winter, let’s be thankful we are blessed with a phenomenal agricultural and transpor
tation system that allows us to enjoy all of these things year round no matter where we are located. Count our blessing that we are a country that can feed itself and feed itself well.
Our Farm in Pictures 6-3-2011
Here is a few photos showing the progress of our crops this week. The one crop I did not include is the alfalfa which is ready for the first cutting to be put down.
The last picture is of our electrical controls at our bin site that were blown down in the wind a few nights ago. We were lucky as the storm weakened by the time it hit us. There were pivot irrigation systems and bins destroyed by the same storm to the north, south, and west of us.
Farm Week In Pictures
This is a picture of some of our soybeans pushing thru the soil. The power of the plant is amazing!!!
Planting At Night With GPS Technology
New Beginnings
Spring is always a time of re-newal and new beginnings on the farm as we plant crops and wait for them to grow and mature into harvest, but this year we have a new beginning in the addition of our third child.
It has been quite a year for us. New house before Christmas, finishing the basement in it, and now adding another piece to our family puzzle. Delaney was born Monday morning and came in at a just perfect 7 lbs 3 ounces. Big brother and big sister are both thrilled. It is nice to have them fighting over holding a baby, than the normal brother/sister fighting. It is almost like our 6 yr old grew up overnight when you see him settle down to sit and hold the baby. There are not many times in life you see him sitting and not moving unless he is sleeping. Our daughter of course is a minnie mom, hovering over the baby every second and talking to her just like the conversations she would have with mom’s tummy before Delaney was born.
We have received quite a little rain lately and it rained all day Monday which allowed me to focus on the moment of having our third child instead of worrying about getting the corn and soybeans in the ground. It is amazing how quickly our moisture has changed around here. In Early April we had been put back in a drought, and have now had over 6 inches of rain in the last couple weeks.
We put 500 acres of corn in the ground before the rain which is sitting in the ground waiting for the sunshine. So, on our farm this week will have the new beginning of a new baby and the new beginning of another crop year. May you all be blessed this season as we proceed through another crop year and another year of life!
Happy Birthday #agchat
“A conversation about ag”, not in person, but on the internet. Twitter, no less. I was skeptical at first when reading of #agchat, and at that time hashtags were the least of my worries as I was just trying to figure out how to tweet. I remember watching the first few conversations and thinking wow, this works, no facial expressions, no body language, just a forum to discuss the ins, outs, good, bad, new, old, trendy, tried, true, experimental, organic, conventional, genetically modified, local, large, small, diversified, specialized, organized, unorganized, independent ways of agriculture with consumers and other producers!!!
Here we are a year later and that first little tweet about having a conversation has turned into a one celebration of the AgChat Foundation, a continuing discussion held every Tuesday evening, offshoots of it all over twitter, and a group of people who have a passion for telling the story of ag and the belief that empowering others in ag to tell their story is one of their most important missions.
I was fortunate enough to attend the first conference in Chicago last August and came away more sure of myself than ever that our “Farm Story” needed to be told. I also came away knowing that I am an #agnerd, although, not as much as others!
I hope you all take a look at the #agchat website and gain an understanding of where it is going and what is happening. I have gotten to know many of the founders through twitter, facebook, etc. and have met them in person at the conference. Although we all have met only once in person, or maybe a few times at most, we have been united by a common cause which is to do the right thing for agriculture, and tell our stories. I have said it before and I will say it again. Who is telling your Farm Story?
Happy birthday #AgChat!
About Us
We are a fifth generation family farm located in South Central Nebraska. We currently raise popcorn, commercial corn, soybeans, alfalfa and prairie hay. We raise the world’s food, feed, fiber and fuel on the same acreage settled by our great-great grandparents in 1892. We are very passionate about agriculture and very proud of the life we have made on our farm.
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