The Farm People Are Coming!

We just got home from a 2 year old grand daughter's birthday party.  Her four year old brother had to call her grandpa up and tell him the farm people are coming!  He asked him, do they have names?  He quickly said, grandma and grandpa!  You know them, the ones who live on the estate!  We had to laugh at that one, out of the mouth of babe's Art Linkletter said.

He was has been here to ride the snowmobile or the Mule many times and the whole deal definitely left an impression!  Of course, his grandma Lu and dad are always asking him if he wants to go to the farm or ask if he had fun there.  Isn't that funny how non-farm people see us down on the farm?

We had to bring the $50 peach pie from the auction here at Dinner in the Fields.  We found out Leadership Clinton made $1300 from that auction and with a $2500 matching donation they cleared $8000 to keep the Dinner in the Fields and other activities going!  I think that is grand!

How we speak with our fields and how we treat our city cousins are important.  The smallest gestures can make the most impact.  There are so many ways to impact people more than big media does and we all know they don't always do a very good job!

They always ask at this time of the year, how are the crops looking?  It's hard to tell them that the once pretty green fields are dying prematurely.  How could late May corn be dropping ears in late August?

 LuAnn is getting it.  We had a good discussion about glyphosate, GMO's, and Goss's Wilt on the way up.  She can pick it out now from the car.  We just watched US Farm report and the "drought damaged" corn they were showing.  She said there it is, on the ears and stalks, just like you showed me!  The video footage showed black lesions on the ears and the stalks that was visible from 1000 miles away from our easy chairs.

How can we grow corn like our handful of friends are growing?  Look at my old posts and keep reading and looking and asking questions.

There are no dumb questions.  The farm people are coming!

Ed Winkle

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Cover Crop Vaccine

"Vaccinate your soil with a cover crop" is this new catchy ad from NRCS.  Is that misleading?  By planting a cover crop we really don't add anything but a seed that will give off root exudation as it sprouts and grows.  By inoculating or vaccinating your soil with these new gases, we do cause many beneficial organisms to repopulate or expand their population.  The result is a healthier place for our intended crop to grow.

I heard a fellow say no wonder SabrEx works so well, everyone uses glyphosate and glyphosate kills beneficial trichaderma fungi.  There are other ways to promote beneficial trichaderma and other bacteria and fungi.

"At the end of the growing season you may be ready to rest, but your soil is not. One final effort can make a big difference: cover cropping. Even small gardens will benefit from the use of cover crops, or "green manures". Tilling, weeding, harvesting and foot traffic of most home gardens tends to destroy soil structure. Planting cover crops is an easy way to revitalize the soil, and help soil tilth and subsequent plant growth. Cover crops are planted in vacant space and worked into the soil after they grow instead of being eaten. They provide a number of advantages to the otherwise wasteful use of space during your garden's off-season.

Cover crops help to retain the soil, lessen erosion, and decrease the impact of precipitation on the garden by slowing the runoff of water. They also reduce mineral leaching and compaction, and suppress perennial and winter annual weed growth. The top growth adds organic matter when it is tilled into the garden soil. The cover crop's root system also provides organic matter and opens passageways that help improve air and water movement in the soil.

Success in the growth of cover crops requires proper selection of the kind of cover crop, correct timing of seeding, and good management techniques. There are many traditional cover crops to select from, including annual ryegrass, winter rye, winter wheat, oats, white clover, sweet clover, hairy vetch and buckwheat. Grasses are easier to grow than legumes such as clover because they germinate more quickly and do not require inoculation. Small seeded crops are more difficult to establish than large seeded types such as oats and buckwheat. In poorly drained areas, grasses may be easier to get started. Winter rye and ryegrass grow in a very dense habit and are much more effective at shading out weeds than oats or small seeded legumes. Availability of seed and cost are other important considerations.

It's time to start vaccinating your soil if you haven't already!

Ed Winkle

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What Harvest?

What harvest?  Wheat harvest!  Leave out the e and wheat becomes what?  What happened is what I wondered as we flew home from Seattle through Minneapolis.  We had a pretty clear afternoon for viewing and I was amazed at the number of wheat fields, the lack of corn fields, especially good looking ones and the severe lack of soybean fields!

What I saw across those 1000 miles really made you wonder how accurate the USDA numbers really are.  A few people I know thought wheat could rally big after the record corn rally last fall but it never happened.  The opposite happened and I saw evidence of it from the airplane.  We saw so many wheat fields across the US yesterday!

This picture from last year in Minnesota is more what I was expecting to see.

I started writing this because I found this incredible and unusual video of wheat harvest.  My favorite is still the Glenvar harvest video in Australia.

Our own wheat harvest here and in this region was excellent.  I hope it doesn't turn out to be the best crop we raised this year.  It was so good our dear USDA sent a special survey in yesterday's mail to see how good ours was!  I wonder how many people got that same mailing?

My dear salesman Leon said he had a wheat for me that yielded 128 bushels per acre for our friend in upstate New York.  After this year's results, I wonder, should we try it?

If you have enough acres, I suppose any acres, wheat is a good rotational crop.  The extra residue and coverage over winter is enough to make it pay if the double crop soybeans or radishes after it pan out.  They always have for me, so I suppose there is no reason for me to not consider wheat.  At today's corn, soybean and wheat price, I see no reason to not consider wheat in my situation.

It's time to order wheat seed and past time to order radish, although it is always a good time to order either one.

What are you planning on sowing this fall?  It's always a good time to sow something.

Ed Winkle

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$800 Cruise

We usually take a trip in August and we were running out of time.  I offered to swing by LuAnn's mother's place on the way to Quebec.  Those farmers came to visit me a few years ago and invited us up to their farms.  We have friends in West Bend Wisconsin we've been wanted to visit since they have been to our house.  We could go to the Upper Peninsula on the way which we also like.

LuAnn said that sounds too much like work and we've worked hard since February.  She got on Norwegian Cruise Lines and found a balcony cabin to Alaska for $800.  I forced my credit card into her hand.  In an hour, we had the trip all set up.

Our first trip to our 49th state was this time in 2009.  It was a very special and memorable trip and just the thought of it made me jump at the chance to do it again.  It's the perfect time to visit Alaska temperature and I think beauty wise, too.  This time she wants to hire a float plane to go look for Grizzly's.  I asked, are you sure?  The last time we were in a single engine plane I thought she was going to throw me out the door of it.  Our pilot friend asked if we wanted to see anything else and I said "swing down over mom's farm 20 miles away."  I didn't know she was sick in the back seat but I quickly found out!


It's been a very busy year and we are both ready to get away.  There is so much beauty in the world it is hard to stay home all the time but it's beautiful here, too.  Late summer and fall is special in the Midwest and I do love it.  It's pretty nice anywhere north of the equator this time of the year, too.  We will be closer to the Arctic circle and the North Pole and it's a great time to be there.  My friend Eddie the school counselor can have it the rest of the year!

Ed

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Crop Tour 8/26/13

My friends Jeff Littrell from Minnesota and Keith Schlapkohl from Iowa stopped by for a quick local crop tour yesterday.  They left their homes Sunday to visit people like me to the east.

I think we answered this post on Crop Talk:  "With the current heat and lack of rain in most of Illinois seems like a lot of corn is denting early anyone else seeing the pale set up?

OK kernel numbers just seeing affects of varying N application timing and when the corn wants to fill from the stalks and leaves early. Beans running out of time to max pods and seeds."

The poster, IlliniCCA summarized what they said they saw and what we saw yesterday.  We didn't find a field of corn that didn't have symptom's of Goss's Wilt in it.  If you don't understand the massive Goss's Wilt problem in US corn, you could go back and read some of my previous blogs about it.  It's been discussed many times on HyMark High Spots.

It doesn't matter if it is GMO corn or non GMO corn, it all has the symptoms.  It started from the seed up and first appears as a few black dots on the third or fourth joint of the corn stalk.  Now, as the season and disease progresses, it shows as sickened, yellow leaves that many misdiagnose as a lack of nitrogen.  The more advanced fields has the famous pink leaves I've spoken of.

To reinforce the belief there is not enough nitrogen, we saw several fields where the corn is black green and not dying where the nitrogen was doubled applied or 300 lbs plus of nitrogen.  So, nitrate is involved but extra nitrogen is not the solution to the problem.

The 250 bushel fields people thought they had will be lucky to break 200.  The 200 bushel fields will be closer to 150.  Since the national average was 124 last year we will actually be closer to that number than 200.  Dr. Mike Cordonnier is guessing 154 bu national average after his own crop tour.  We think you can take 10-20 bushels off that.  He might be right and I hope he is but the crop is sicker than anyone understands.

Keith and Jeff understand and are trying to teach people like me.  Right now all we can do is get people to see the problem.  We have all winter to discuss how to address the problem.  We will continue to address it here.

I started to talk about the problem in earnest 3 crops ago, this is 2011.

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Holy Cow, What A Haul!

I am trying to catch up from our trip to Alaska and found this buried in the bottom of my Facebook pages.  Holy Cow, What A Haul!  I notice the garden is looking a little ragged in this picture but the little girl and produce speak for themselves.  This much produce has been taken out many times this summer.

I sure wish I could have been there to help Katherine pick and talk about crops.  Papaw loves to talk about crops and loves to talk to kids!

We are blessed with 12 beautiful grand children.  I find myself asking now how old is this one, when is their birthday?  Ariana will be two years old Saturday, we almost got a September birthday with her.  We have so many birthdays in August from two of my children to three grandchildren now.

What you see in the picture is a fraction of what our 40 by 60 garden has produced so far.  We are way over 1000 pounds and a 1000 dollars return so far.  We just put up another ten pounds of sweet corn last night.  The best thing is I know exactly where the seed came from and exactly how this food was grown. There is no commercial fertilizer applied, just what the radishes took up. You can't get any better than that!

It's time to get these kids into our HyMark Master Gardener program as grandma and grandpa need help!  If we can get it planted timely and in good condition, and keep those blessed weeds out for a month, this is what you get!  I call this our radish garden and there are baby radishes starting in it right now as the crop is senescing or reaching its maturity.  Those big tubers we grew last fall are what made this garden what it is today.

If you need help with feeding your garden, just ask.  Our email is always open and I think most of you know that mine is edwinkle at cinci.rr.com now as we left Frontier and that old email address is gone.  It is still floating around in many of your address books so delete the old one and put the new one if you like!  I have an account at Midwest Labs, 11085, and if you use Midwest to send your soil and tissue tests in I can help you fine tune your program.  We have a few years of experience here if you want to tap into it!

I have to thank all of my mentors who keep me on track, challenged and thinking.  We all need mentors and I figure I have the best in the whole wide world!  The job of passing it on is never ending and I enjoy it all.  I am waiting for two mentors to come visit from Iowa and Minnesota right now.

That's why I try to write a blog every day and still enjoy growing gardens and fields and talking to those who do.

Ed Winkle

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When Moms Talk Back

"With Ag Day at the Illinois State Fair set to kick off today and with a Chicago mom blog making the news recently, it feels like a good time to talk a little about Illinois Farm Families.

It was three years ago on this day that five Illinois farm and commodity groups announced they had banded together to form the Illinois Farm Families program. At that time, it was a first-ever coalition of farm groups: Illinois Pork, Illinois Beef, Illinois Corn, Illinois Soybean and Illinois Farm Bureau. They pooled their resources, hired a marketing agency, researched consumer beliefs and then launched a campaign. Their goal: reach the people who make the food buying decisions."

The cool thing? They learned: A) the people making the food buying decisions in a household are most typically women and often, a mom. And B), those women are most likely to listen to and be influenced by another mom. So Illinois Farm Families recruited a handful of Illinois farm wives to be "Farm Moms." They created an initial meet up in Chicago, which by our standards, seemed ridiculously successful.

From there, they started the Field Moms program. In year one, they took 10 Chicago moms out to farms. They rode in tractors, saw GPS, learned about precision farming, went in a hog confinement, saw a cattle feedlot, talked steak, watched cattle be ultrasounded, walked into a dairy and learned about hormones from a dairy veterinarian. Then they went back home and blogged about what they learned. Even better, those of us who go to know those Chicago moms formed real relationships with them; we've become Facebook friends and we follow each other on Twitter and Instagram. I see pictures of their new babies; they see pictures of our new baby calves. It works out pretty well.

This year, they expanded the Field Mom program and are in the middle of bringing 25 Chicago moms out to farms. They've done several farm tours already and have a couple more to go as harvest kicks off."

I think moms need to talk back more about our food and the system that provides it, don't you?  What can you and I do to inform them and invite them to "talk back?"

Ed

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