2012 year in review

I can't believe half of January has already passed. I had been wanting to do some kind of a 2012 wrap up and couldn't think of anything until after I uploaded photos to my flickr account. I have a decent amount of photos uploaded from over the past few years, many of the photos have descriptions of what is taking place. It dawned on me I could pick and choose various photos from through out the year, I wasn't as camera happy as in the past partially because much of it will not vary a great deal from year to year.

We have a small herd of spring calving cows. I was surprised at how many we had the first month, 80%. Then calving slowed to a crawl. I think the heat during the summer before combined with them raising their first calf and were still growing may have had some influence on it. This happens to be the only white faced calf born this year.

I spent a good portion of my spring seeding corn, sunflowers, soybeans and grain sorghum. I didn't have a picture of planting this year so I used this one from my archives.

Wheat harvest came unusually early this year, but this yields were respectable considering the weather turned hot and dry during grain fill. We started harvest the end of May, where normally we may start June 17th. As what normally happens I spent the first few days finishing sorghum planting. We had started planting early this year and I finished planting this year earlier and finished earlier than normal.

The bare strip is from having half the planter turned off while planting sorghum the previous year. Soybeans struggled to sprout and grow here until after a good rain. I was surprised while checking planting depth during planting that we actually had some soil moisture in the planting zone where there was even a minimal amount of residue covering the soil.

This how I spent most of wheat harvest and the rest of the summer irrigating corn and soybeans. We had replaced an irrigation system last spring and this is the first irrigation pass with it.

On June 16th we had a group of farmers from Bulgaria visit the farm. It was an interesting visit, once they became comfortable with us the ones that could speak English visited with us. They were interested in how we raise Sunflowers, but farmers will be farmers no matter where they are from the conversation turned to farming practices in general and all the crops we raise. This is the only photo I took was this one of them looking over my dad's older Corvette. The International Grains Program at Kansas State University coordinated the tour.

We did our normal double crop planting of soybeans and sunflowers this summer after wheat harvest. We planted more double crop soybeans this past summer than previously and less sunflowers.

We acquired a few fall calving cows last spring. They had started calving a couple of weeks earlier than expected. These cows came from Harms Plainview Ranch so they should genetically exceed most commercial cows.

This fall during wheat seeding we had a group of wheat flour millers from Japan visit. They were interested in hard white wheat and how we raise it. My dad is explaining to them how the drill puts seed and fertilizer in the soil in this picture. This was also coordinated with International Grains Program at Kansas State University and
Farmer Direct Foods was also involved. My mom is a heckuva a home baker and made a loaf of bread with both red, the more common breadwheat, and white twisted together which gave them a comparison of the two types of bread.

Milo, also known as grain sorghum, harvest was fair to good, I experimented with more hybrids this year because of an old reliable being unavailable. Planting date and the years how many years the field hand been in a no till cropping system. This happens to be a variety that has yellow grain and is known for high yield potential. I chose this variety because it was optimum planting time and I thought we would have timely August rain. We didn't get the amount of rain in August that I was expecting, but the heavy wheat stubble and quality soil held the water and allowed us to have a good crop on this field. The grain heads weren't anything besides ordinary, but it came into the combine really good.

A field of double crop soybeans during harvest. They ranged anywhere from fair to bad, in some fields the real advantage for having them was establishing some bacteria in the soil that helps the plant extract nitrogen from air.

My oldest son with a curious calf. I picked up my son after school to help me 
cube the cows, cubes are a high protein feed used to supplement cattle. While 
the cows were crowding around the piles of cubes, the calves were loitering 
around the pickup. This guy walked up to my son and started nibbling on his 
coat and checking him out. The calf had done this for a few minutes before I 
took the picture. This set of cows seem to be very calm and gentle which is 
great for having him out with me learning about cattle. Since he is all about 
animals and livestock, I want him to learn all he can about working with 
them properly.

Our irrigated corn was good despite the hot weather last summer. We did have a hybrid that suffered from sun scald thankfully I didn't have alot of that one. Last year I had tried quite a few new hybrids and only planted the ones that performed the best and didn't experiment with anything new this year. The irrigated soybeans were good to great, a couple of fields had damage from a corn herbicide.

Jack Rabbits

I wrote this back in late September or early October, I was waiting to find that perfect picture to accompany it and with the chaos of fall farm work; wheat seeding along with harvesting corn, soybeans and grain sorghum this got put on the back burner. I was inspired to post it while watching Ken Burn's Dust Bowl, this isn't about the dust bowl but it does include a story passed to me from my Granddad.

The other day my youngest son was riding in the tractor with me when I was seeding wheat. He had became bored with it after about an hour, he turns seven in a couple of weeks but thinks he is ready to drive tractors,  when we spotted a couple of Jack Rabbits in the field right before he left. He thought it was so cool to watch them run across the field. It's not uncommon to see wildlife coyotes, pheasants, deer, and hawks are common which I consider a perk of the farming profession.

This reminded me of a story my granddad tells of the first time they tried raising soybeans. I think he said it was back in the 50's and his dad, my great granddad, brought seed back from Iowa. He had seen it growing in Iowa when he had gone to visit family, my family originally settled in northwest Iowa. They planted it to be hayed to feed cattle the next winter. I don't remember him telling me how big it had gotten, but the Jack Rabbits mowed it to the ground and that was the last soybeans they tried raising until the 70's.

This story struck me as odd because it is so rare to see a Jack Rabbits now, but to have enough of them to do damage. I've heard stories from him and other old timers about how horribly over populated Jack Rabbits were then. I had heard stories about farmers having Jack Rabbit roundups, poisoning them and other mass eradication methods.

I seem to see Prairie Chickens in the same fields as I see Jacks. There are only 5 or 6 fields, I think part of the reason why some of these native animals are common in these particular fields is because of how few and far away trees are and how close virgin prairie is to them. Leaving the stubble from the previous crop, particularly wheat stubble, and allowing weeds to get some growth when there isn't a crop growing might mimic some aspects of a prairie.

Why we choose GMO crops

There were many reasons that we choose corn and soybean varieties that contain GMO traits. Many things took place near the time when GMO crops were released. We increased the acres of our land that we used a no till cropping system that relies on crop rotation as much as herbicides to control weeds. The government farm program was greatly changed that allowed us to plant a variety of farm program crops that we needed in our rotation. In the previous program farmers were only allowed to plant crops according to "base acres", historical crop planting, without a lot of paperwork and taking some acres out of the program or buying or renting land that contained the necessary base acres. In my part of Kansas most land contain largely wheat acres, due to wheat followed by wheat for many years as the primary crop rotation. Wheat is great for a rotation, particularly when rotating to corn or grain sorghum in an area like this where water availability can be a challenge, but a poor choice for continuous cropping particularly when combined with a moldboard plow that places all of the residue in what is essentially a dry tomb that only allows for minimal decomposition or burning the residue off and allows for increased soil erosion and poor soil health.

Before the advent of Roundup Ready Soybeans, Roundup is a non selective contact herbicide, the herbicide choices for weed outbreaks were limited. a product that was effective for us in past was Cobra, but it made the soybeans look very sick. We were some of the early adapters of no till in our area so a lot of trial and error in crop rotations took place and herbicide carryover and rotation restrictions are always a concern. After experimenting soybeans were found to be a good fit between grain sorghum and wheat. Rotation restrictions also puts some limits on the preplant residual herbicide choices and sometimes also on the herbicides we can apply over the top during the growing season. This makes RoundUp, active ingredient glyphosate, very attractive since there is no rotation restrictions following application of it. Using Cobra as an example, it has a 12 months rotation restriction to wheat, we typically seed wheat within less than a week following soybean harvest so if we used it we would have to either idle the land for a year or plant another crop the following spring.

We plant corn that contain both herbicide tolerant and insect resistant corn on irrigated fields. Initially we were reluctant of planting both Roundup Ready soybeans and corn in the rotation, because of the chance of developing herbicide resistance in weeds. Insect resistant corn was very appealing because it controled corn borers without the need for organophosphate insecticides, these were a very effective class of insecticides that killed every insect present in the applied area and has been banned a few years ago. With GMO corn we have targeted insect control and according to USDA-ARS researcher Dr. Jonathan Lundgren's has found a tremendous amount of predator insects present in fields of Bt corn. Dr. Lundgren feels that farmers might want to consider saving seed expenses by reducing the amount of Bt corn they plant because of the effectiveness and widespread use. The last few years we've planted corn with stacked traits to obtain the insect resistance we feel we need in the corn varieties that best suit our irrigated fields. With so many different traits available care is taken to note which fields are planted to herbicide resistant corn if follow up weed treatment is needed, all of the necessary refuge for the insect resistant traits are planted first. We plant seed from all three major GMO technology companies, each Bt corn is slightly different, we try to match the seed variety that's best suited to the field.

Our non irrigated corn, in the years we feel that our higher quality land has adequate moisture to raise a corn crop, we plant heebicide resistant corn. Insect resistant traits aren't necessary because of time between possible corn crops, diverse rotation and the physical distance to other corn fields and it reduces seed expense on a crop that might fail. sometimes seed dealers will give us a bag or two of seed that they think is ideal for those fields that contain insect resistant traits.

For the last few years in our soybeans were seeded them in 15 inch rows. This narrower row spacing allow the plants close the rows earlier and shade out late germinating weeds. I'm wanting to try this on corn also, the combine attachment for corn has to match row spacing so this is an added expense for a specialized piece of equipment. This past year in a weedy corn field I noticed the narrow strip where the fertilizer is applied next to the corn row was largely void of weeds. I think with narrower rows combined with how we apply fertilizer might decrease weed pressure and the possibility of a late herbicide application.

Sorghum and sunflowers are such a minor crop and small market, seed companies didn't see enough market for the time and research to develop GMO traits for them. After the export challenges faced by corn and soybeans GMO wheat research was essentially shelved, there are rumors that research will resume in the near future. These crops in addition to soybeans are what we grow on our non irrigated land, most of our acreage isn't irrigated.

Heat wave

We are in the grips of the heat wave that is sweeping most of the nation. It's hard on everything outside. Our corn is in the high water use growth stage, it's using .40 inches of water use a day. It can be a challenge keeping irrigation running. Engines that run the pumps and generators can overheat and shut off, we have gauges that will shut off the engines before they're damaged. Our low humidity is increasing the evaporation even with drop nozzles that put water into the corn's canopy.


This is a corn field that has either been put up as hay or chopped for silage. The brown strips are corn that has been left for insurance adjustors to verify loss. Normally the corn would still be green rather than brown. This field is only 80 miles from where we farm.

The corn yields are being hampered by the high temperatures even with adequate water. During pollination the pollen is damaged from the high heat and reduces the kernels that will be on each ear of corn. With temperatures in the low 90's at midnight it's hard for corn to release the water it used earlier in the day to transport nutrients from the soil, this also hampers yields.

Our irrigated soybeans need .30 inches of water a day, but they are getting sacrificed some right now to keep the water on the corn. They are a very resilient crop and if we can get some rain soon they will be fine, the more critical time for them to have water will be in a few weeks when they start setting and filling pods. So there is still time to water them to make a respectable yield.

On a drought tour of extreme southwest Kansas Governor Brownback he was quoted in the news saying. “There’s been less rainfall this year than in the peak of the 1930s Dust Bowl with the same heat and wind. Hats off to the producers for being such good stewards.” This shows just how extreme the drought is in the south western portion of the state. It is also a testament to farming practices that have been implementing since then, we no longer bury the stubble leaving bare soil vulnerable to wind.

Late July update from down on the farm

The past few weeks has found me finishing planting sunflowers after wheat and now keeping sprinkler irrigation systems running.


Here is a field of sunflowers I planted in early July. I was surprised at how much they have grown the past few days.


Our early planted sunflowers in bloom. The blooms last for about a week and then the petals fall off as the seeds start developing. We will harvest them mid to late September. The seeds will go to a processing plant where oil will be extracted for a no to low trans fat cooking oil.


The grain sorghum has pushed it's seed heads up. It seems early to me, but with nice rain and hot weather has sped up it's maturity. Grain Sorghum is a crop from Africa so it thrives on the hot weather and hot, humid nights that we're having now. Corn on the other hand thrives on cool nights.


This is not a sight that any farmer with irrigation wants to see when crops need irrigation. Lightning struck the electrical connections at the center and disassembly was required to get the replacement part in place. We then spent several hours the next couple of days diagnosing other problems with this system. It felt good to get it running right.


This was a great sight on a hot summer evening. After being out in the heat and the frustration of diagnosing an irrigation system that wasn't working it was refreshing to see this one putting water on soybeans. The soybeans are using just under a half inch of water a day, and we're applying 1 inches every 2 to 3 days.