Re: Year in review

Posted by paul on January 01, 2021 at 20:31:29 from (66.60.215.13):

In Reply to: Year in review posted by jon f mn on January 01, 2021 at 15:40:08:

I was on an austerity program this year, I needed to pay off a balloon payment on the 55 acres of land we bought, was due last month, so I worked very hard to not buy much.

My bottle neck is trying to haul away the crop in fall, so I did buy these two wagons. Rated at 400 and 500 bu, that is of course optimistic rating. But with my pair of 365 wagons and some smaller wagons I can get a few rounds made at a time combing and then get more hauled per trip. I need to speed up harvest, I shopped hard, the Minnesota wagon was a real good deal, the J&M brought my average back up but it will be nice to have them.

Worked more on my small patch of 15 acres of oats and cover crops, I rotate it on 3 different fields over 3 years, have the neighbor put hog manure on after the straw is baled off. See if I can build up some dirt into better dirt.its only a small acreage, but I can only get rid of so much oats and straw a year...... I have some clover, alfalfa, turnips, and the reseeded oats as a fall cover for green manure.

I have a sand hill that rarely makes a good crop, 4-5 acres in a regular field. For a decade or more I had it planted to alfalfa, which turned into grass hay. It makes a good one cutting from spring rains, then might accumulate 1/2 of a cutting the rest of the season as it just gets too dry. Well I decided to work it up this spring and plant corn into it, we finally had a dry spring I could get a good crop planted on time. Then it rained no stop all summer, boy we have been wet for 5 years now, terrible wet. I had several 2-3 inch rains close together, a 6 inch rain, water standing everywhere, but still this was a better year than the previous 4, as we had a dry early spring to get the crop in early. Anyhow, that corn on the sand yielded the best I’ve ever seen corn there, ever, by far, and I was a little kid hanging on to dads knee going over that sand hill many decades ago. I need to get it back into alfalfa, but might do beans this year, I need to get a few thistles under control. Beans tend to get almost knee high, and then stagnate in September when it gets dry and end so short they don’t even feed into the combine. Corn typically ends up nubbins that pull through the header. Anyhow it was nice to get a real crop off those acres.

Unfortunately I broke that rib and cracked another when the ladder broke under me and I fell back on a wagon hitch the first of October, so I missed out on most of harvest. Neighbor did it for me. I got good enough to combine the last 20 acres, and could do a few loads with the new wagons. Very carefully......

I did get the land paid off, still living the austerity program, but things look good. Doc said my rib should be 100% in three months, which is today so I feel good about that too.

Certainly an odd year, but was close to normal as a farmer, compared to so many. I count my blessings. I tend to be a loner and shy in real life, but I really enjoy the occasional seed corn meeting, county fair, even drive to a place to pay bills and chat 10 minutes with the office crew. I really miss that interaction, it starts to feel lonely when so cut off from everything. It was nice when live auctions started again in late summer here, and I could distantly attend several of those and see some people. My wagons came from two of the auctions.

Enjoyed your much more interesting message, Jon.

Paul

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