Tag: agriculture
Top 10 Things I Love About Farm Life
Top 10 lists are fun write out. I thought it would be fun to put photos with my top 10 list of things I love about farm life.
10. Fresh pork. We are pig farmers, so we always have a freezer full of fresh pork. Bacon and pork chops have to be the favorites. Grilled pork chops and Marshall Salad pair very well together. Follow the link for the salad recipe, shown here with Beef Strip Steaks to show a little love to our beef friends.
9. Spring. After long winters of snow, ice, and wind, it is so good to be able to work outside in just a long sleeved shirt. The smell of freshly turned soil is so awesome. After the crops are planted, waiting for the first shoots to push through the ground seems to take forever. Suddenly, there is a green haze over the fields. We wait eagerly for the first signs that you can “row” a crop.
8. Watching crops grow. Growing our crops is our business, but that doesn’t mean we’re on autopilot like some robotic device. I worry. A lot. I worry about getting enough rain, too much rain, hail storms, wind storms. In the fall, I worry about early snow storms. There are things we can do to give our crops the best chance at reaching their full potential: testing the soil and the manure to make sure we are applying the correct amount of manure in the fall, using cover crops to hold top soil in place over the winter, waiting to plant until the soil temperatures are ideal in the spring, and timing our weed control methods to have the least impact on the plants (check out this flame weeding video for one of our methods). The rest I shouldn’t worry about, but I’ll admit, I have troubles giving all of that to God.
7. Meeting cool people. Jonathan and I have had the privilege of meeting some pretty cool people because we sell some of our corn to a place that makes vodka. Dean Phillips, of Phillips Distilling has visited our farm, and learned about the combine, and what it takes to grow the corn they use. Joe and Connie from Chatham Imports have also visited our farm, learning about us and what it is we do. You can read about that in this series -The Power of Bundt Cake Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. There have also been a few advertising agencies that we have met. Jonathan was even interviewed for the Prairie Vodka website. That was a pretty cool experience.
6. Work hard, play hard. We love getting together with family. If it is at a lake, all the better. I like to relax a bit and fish, but Jonathan loves to play on the jet skis. We look forward to the few days in the summer where we are free to leave the farm and relax.
5. Wildlife. Who doesn’t like to watch wild animals in their habitat? This year, I have watched a fox and her two kits near our grove of trees, a doe and her fawn grazing in our yard, and a coyote who casually walked away while I was working in a field near it’s home. I have watched a dozen hawks circle in the sky while preparing soil for planting, I watched a cicada drying its wings after its metamorphosis, and have seen butterflies softly flitting around in the yard. Watching the wildlife makes me appreciate the beauty all around us.
4. Sunsets. Living on the prairie has its advantages. The skies are endless, and most nights we are treated to wonderful sunsets. In the summer, the sunsets seem to go on forever. To see some gorgeous North Dakota sunsets, visit my friend, Katie Pinke’s blog. She has a blog post about 14 Late Summer North Dakota Sunrises and Sunsets. One thing I love about working outside in the evening, is the way the skies can change so quickly. From a flaming red and orange, to a soft pastel pink, to a mix of purple and deep pinks all a matter of minutes.
3. Driving large pieces of machinery. I was not meant to drive a little car like a Toyota or a Honda. I like to drive tractors and combines. You can see more when you are sitting up high. Maybe that’s why I like driving pickups more than cars. I do love my minivan, but I get a little embarrassed when we bring it in for an oil change and there are corn stalks stuck on the bottom from driving out to the combine. I was pretty nervous to learn how to drive the combine, but now I love it! We had our combine all set up for our Century Farm Celebration and our county’s I Met a Farmer Tour. It’s a fun way to introduce people to farming, and they think it’s cool that I get to drive it.
2. Harvest! I love harvest. This is the time of year when we see the results of all the labor that was put into the crop throughout the growing season. When we plant the seeds in the spring, we are hopeful that we will have favorable weather, few bad storms, and be able to harvest enough so we will be able to farm again next year. We are thankful for every bushel of grain that goes into the bin. Yes, the hours are long, the pace is frantic at times, and there is always the worry of an early snowstorm, but those are the things that keep it from being boring. This is one of my favorite harvest photos, paired with a harvest prayer. It was also shared as a Wordless Wednesday photo a few weeks ago.
So, what is the number 1 thing I love about farm life?
1. Working every day with my best friend, Jonathan. Yeah, yeah. It’s sappy, I know. But I wouldn’t trade this life with anyone. Jonathan and I celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary in August. We were married during a drought year, so we came home from our honeymoon a day early to help with corn harvest. This city girl learned quickly how to move wagons, and unload the corn into the bins. Jonathan and his dad are very patient teachers, which made the transition so much better. I later graduated to running the stalk chopper, then the chisel plow, the field cultivator, and finally the combine. With every new skill, Jonathan has been able to calm my nerves, and give me confidence to tackle the next big thing. I have grown from a shy 20 year old newlywed into a mouthy 40 (something) gray haired lady. I don’t think he regrets that. I don’t care what you want to do in life, a supportive family makes it much easier. To Jonathan, thank you for being a great man of God, husband, teacher, jokester, and friend. I love you!
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Tillage Radish Cover Crop Update
The neighbors have been asking, so here is an update on our Tillage Radish and Oat cover crop.
We have received more rain this fall than we have during the same time period the last two years, so our cover crops have gotten off to a great start. We planted this field on August 31st. You can read about the process here.
Neighbors are starting to ask what we have growing in our field. They know one of the plants is a small grain (wheat, oats, barley, and rye are considered small grains), but they are not sure what the other crop is that was planted in rows. This made me think that maybe the rest of you would like to see what our neighbors are seeing.
This first photo shows the tillage radish planted in rows with oats in between the rows.
This is the overview of the field. You can see how the Tillage Radish is more noticeable in the oats.
The radish leaves are broad, and very different from other crops grown in our area. The leaves and the root will almost disappear completely over the winter, leaving the nutrients behind in the soil.
I wanted to see how big the radish taproot was 38 days after planting. To make sure I was getting a random radish, I walked out into the field, and plopped my shovel near a row. That was the one I would dig up.
The soil is still pretty moist after our weekend rains, so digging was easy. I wanted to get as much of the taproot as I could, so I teased it out of the loosened dirt.We are in a wind advisory, so holding the radish still enough for a photo outside was a bit of a challenge.
I walked back into the house to measure the length of the taproot. The diameter is just shy of 1/2 inch at its widest. I was impressed that the roots measured at 8 1/2 inches already!
I believe I was able to tease out the entire taproot, and didn’t break off the end, but it was difficult to tell without a magnifying glass. Here is another view of the root length.
As long as we don’t have a hard freeze (around 20 deg F), the radish will continue to grow both in diameter and length. I’ll take a few more photos in a couple of weeks, and give you another update. In the meantime, we are getting ready to finish harvesting our last field of soybeans.
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First Week in October
“In harvest time, harvest folk, servants and all
Should make, all together, good cheer in the hall
Once ended the harvest, let none be beguiled
Please such as did help thee, man, woman and child.”
– Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry
Late September begins harvest on our farm. We typically start harvesting soybeans first, then move to corn when the soybeans are all in the bin. This year, we got started a little later than usual, due to the late spring and cool summer.
A few years ago, I started running the combine. This year, we have a new to us combine, so I needed to get used to new controls. Jonathan was also really patient with me when I was sick in bed on Monday, and baked for Cottonwood’s Central Park Market on Wednesday. I did run the combine for awhile on Tuesday, which made me feel a whole lot better.
We combine our soybeans at an angle to prevent dirt from building up on the platform. We don’t roll our soybean ground to make it flat, since we cultivate the beans a couple of times during the season. The cultivating created ridges, which can sometimes cause dirt to get scooped up when we combine straight down the rows. Since we use AutoSteer technology in our combine as well, we are able to program it to follow the angle we want.
Wednesday evening, the predicted rain began to fall, and put to a halt our harvesting for this week. The guys worked quickly to move all of the equipment into sheds to keep the harvested soybeans dry.
This was the first evening thunderstorm that I can remember this year. Most of the storms we did get came during the day. I have always wanted to try taking photos of lightning, so I quick looked up a basic how-to for my type of camera, and started shooting. Now, I can’t wait for the next round of lightning!
The weather has been rainy and drizzly the past few days, and it looks like that pattern will hold until Sunday. It has been nice to be able to catch up on a few things in the house, and get a bit more rest at night.
Have a great week!
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Wordless Wednesday – Autumn Harvest
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Teaching Flat Ryan About Cover Crops
FlatRyan is the brainchild of a few fabulous agvocates who took over the Agriculture Proud blog while Ryan is finishing his Master’s degree. You can read all about it and learn how to participate here. This blog post first appeared on Agriculture Proud on September 18th.
On the last day of August, #FlatRyan got in on a little cover crop planting on our farm. Saturday was pretty warm for Minnesota standards, but it was a good day to get some work done. We do things a little differently than most of our neighbors, which sometimes leads to many questions. We farm organic row crops, so we follow different rules. One of those rules is a three crop rotation. Each year, we have approximately one-third field corn, one-third soybeans, and one-third small grain (wheat, and a mix of barley & field peas). We use cover cropping to help lock in nutrients, for weed control, and to prevent soil erosion.
The field we were working in had been a barley and field pea field. The barley and peas had been harvested, the straw baled, and manure applied for next year’s corn crop. The manure was worked into the soil with a deep till chisel plow before we seeded oats with a broadcast spreader. The oats were worked in with the field cultivator, which was set to go only an inch or two deep. We were then ready to try something we’ve never done before.
#FlatRyan, Pongo the Rat Terrier, and I took the Ranger across the road to check in with Jonathan and see how he was doing.
We have been seeding Tillage Radish with our oats for a few years. Tillage Radish is different from the radishes you grow in your garden. A Tillage Radish has a pretty strong tap root that can break up compacted layers in the soil. The root keeps nutrients locked up over the winter, and when the plant dies, it leaves a hole the size of the radish that the corn plant’s roots will be able to use to grow bigger.
Last year, we attended a cover cropping seminar, and heard about a study that was being done where they planted the Tillage Radish seed with the corn planter, using sugar beet plates. To us, it made total sense. Using GPS mapping in the tractor, we have the capability of planting the corn directly over the rows that we planted the Tillage Radish in. We weren’t sure exactly how well it would work, or if the Precision Planting system would be able to accurately measure how many seeds per acre we were planting. This is where #FlatRyan joined us.
When Jonathan got to the end, we needed to check the planter boxes to see if he was planting the correct number of seeds per acre. Here, #FlatRyan is looking to see how much seed is left in the first box. 
It was decided that Jonathan needed more seed, so #FlatRyan, Pongo, and I headed to the seed shed in the yard. Many of our bags are white with no markings, so reading a seed tag is important. Tillage Radish comes in colorful bags, so they were easy to spot.
We loaded a couple of bags into the back of the Ranger, and went back across the road to meet the planter once again.
Jonathan split the 50 pounds of seed between the 16 boxes, and we put the other bag in the rock box. We still weren’t sure how much would be needed to finish this field. #FlatRyan was so excited by how well the planter was working to plant the radish seeds that he was kicking up his heels!
Not long after Jonathan finished planting this field, the clouds rolled in, and we were blessed with ½ inch of rain!
This is how the field looked 10 days after we planted the Tillage Radish. Looks like both the oats and the radish are off to a good start!
After #FlatRyan’s weekend with us, Jonathan and I seeded and planted our wheat fields the same way. In the last field, we planted 46 acres of Tillage Radish like we did in the barley and pea field. We were racing with the rain on the last day, so we decided to broadcast seed the oats and Tillage Radish on the remaining 100 acres. Then, for good measure, we left about 8 acres as a check strip. That way, we have all three methods in one field. Next spring we will till the field with the field cultivator, which will disturb the decayed matter and small weeds on the surface, but will preserve the channels created by the Tillage Radish.
We hope #FlatRyan had fun helping us with our experiment! This is one experiment that will take a long time to see the results, but in the meantime, it does keep the neighbors guessing about what we’re up to!
To see more of Flat Ryan’s adventures, click here. He’s had a lot of fun, and has learned some amazing things so far!
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Wordless Wednesday-Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
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Throwback Thursday – Thankful for Modern Tractors!
I am so thankful for tractors with cabs and climate control systems! Not to mention the GPS system and autosteer.
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Soon!
It’s getting close to the middle of September. The crops are maturing a little later this year, but soon, this will be a regular sight….
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Wordless Wednesday – Just What We Needed
We received a half inch of rain on our newly planted cover crop…
