Monday, June 2, 2008

Summer Finally, I love it.....

Gosh thank God, finally we are rid of cold and damp and summer weather has arrived.
OH, how I love it, and the crops love it as well. The corn as you see in the top photo taken last night is getting good color and will soon send it's roots deep enough to tap into the ample supply of nitrogen that I placed there beneath the rows last fall...It should be quite a year if ample rain falls when needed as by error of my fertilizer dealer I applied 250 pounds per acre and not the 160 that I was shooting for....But should I get the ideal growing season it could provide me with possible the best yeilds yet seen on my acres...Always something to hope and pray for.

The Soybeans in the lower photo are equally off to a flying start...Emerging well up through the corn stalk mulch that was last years corn crop flatened by my John Deere no till drill...I love the system, the savings on eliminating "recreation farming" I call it of tillage that truly is not needed... it is ugly and that right there keeps a lot of farmers from doing it...We all spent so many years watching our fathers till the soil each year plowing it under and looking so clean and nice and we then did it ourselves likewise...Most have reduced the tillage trips, but not many of us have kicked the tillage completely, but once you do and you know you can and it will work, it is a great feeling to know that you are not only saving so much diesel fuel but the time and wear and tear on equipment also. And then the real bonus of knowing that you are building soil in a partnership with earthworms...Yeal they are willing partners working night and day coming to the surface and eating thier little tummies full of last years crop residue lying there...Then they decide to go down their little runways deep into the soil for a nice drink of water and then they wiggle around a bit and take a big poop...yeal the best part of their day, and then they head on up for yet another nice big dinner of crop residue....The runways they make in the soil also provide huge benefit by allowing rain fall to penetrate the soil down these holes and not run off to a low location and make a pond that maybe then destroys crops....It is all so cool, and is just something that no tillers enjoy thinking and talking about.... Not a lot going on in Indiana this time of year and hey it does not take a lot to entertain an Indiana corn and soy farmer...

Have a great day and be nice to earthworms, if you see one crossing the street though, go ahead and run over him as the ants just love'em...

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