Merry Christmas to all!

Brrrrrrrrrr

Beautiful fall morning in northeast Iowa

Combined 75 acres yesterday. Average dry yield was 209 vs 185 last year.

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Harvest has officially started for me

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Not so joyous start to the harvest.

Was supposed to start combining today, go out to finish opening up the bins and turns out my dry auger blew over in the wind yesterday.

Gonna be a long weekend.

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Office is framed up

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Looks like we may get wet

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So far in IN what you see will be what you get.

The corn northwest if INDY is much more mature compared to what we sampled in ohio yesterday where corn was in early milk stage and therefore many of the samples were very optomistic for ohio.

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Can you sy variable?

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New shop is coming along

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Pulled a few ears this morning

Finally back from Alaska late last night, feels good to be home.

No big surprise that this mornings drive to look at my fields was disappointing and I lowered my yield expectations to 185 for my farm average(which is my 5-yr average and the same farm average as last year). 2 weeks ago I was hoping to set a new high for a farm average corn yield (200+). Oh well, it could be worse.


Beans are looking really good so far, just starting to fill pods.

Feeling a little better

After further investigation, so far this incident is isolated to my refuge in one field. 25 acres total. I hope I have time to check the rest of my fields today before leaving for AK tomorrow.

Rootworm silk feeding ruined my pollination

This is isolated to my refuge (20%) corn so far, but most my other varieties have not gotten to brown silk like this one has.

I dont know what to say other than this is a bad deal. I'm in shock. Plant health in my area is a 10.....and I would roughly estimate yield loss around 20-30% minimum.

Flying on some fungicide

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Early hybrid at blister

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Pollination isn't completely over yet.

This is a pic from a 102 day corn planted around May 10th. I thought it would be done by now, but stand corrected.

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Pollinated ear of corn

A brief explanation of pollination is the bottom end of the ear sends its silks out first, followed by the rest of the ear. Once the silk receives its pollen, the silk detachs from the kernel and turn a brown in color. In this picture you can see roughly 2/3 of the ear has pollinated and looks (as of now) that it has done so uniformly (a good thing).

This is one of the first fields I had tassel, so I hope the rest go this good.

It was darn hot today with air temps at 95F and 75% humidity making it feels like close to 120F.

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Whole area is about 95% tasseled

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Most of the corn is tasseling

My slowest hybrid to tassel is my refuge, which is due to very heavy rootworm pressure.

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Heat is usually a good thing

However, we have only missed the last 2 rains and already corn is showing stress on the lighter ground.
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Beans are looking good

I would estimate height around 12-16" tall.
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End of a legacy.

The only structure left standing from when my grandpa purchased this farm in 1950 was the old barn and on silo. The barn came down today to make room for a new shop. It wasn't getting used and was in need of repair anyway.
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All of knee high by the 4th

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Rainy morning

Corn is knee high (depending on who's knee it is).

Got most my side dressing and spraying done.

Corn in this area looks great. We have been missing the heavy rains so far (we will have to see what this week brings) and the heat has helped green things up nicely.
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Finally getting some sidedressing done

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A little wind blown, but looking good.

We received about .6 inches of rain last night which was very welcomed. Hieght on this would be 14 inches and stage would be V5.

I just got done helping put on our littls towns celebration, so I'm behind on sidedressing and spraying. Should get back in the field Sunday to try and catch up.
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Good growing weather finally

This corn was planted May 6th and rough measurement puts it around 6" tall. Been 80s here the last few days, without the wind it would have been great weather. (The wind can be rough on little seedlings).




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Beans are just poking through.

I always was amazed by the amount of force one root has to put out in order to push a large bean like these through the soil.
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Corn coming nicely

This was one of the last fields I planted.




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Took a corn tour and ended up at Iowa Speedway

I will say a lot of the state emerged at the same time. 350 miles of traveling this weekend the whole state is close to the same stage.
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Finished with beans

All 160 acres. It didn't take long once I applied myself (I took yesterday afternoon off to plant my garden with my wife).

Now I just have to pick up rock, sidedress 890 acres of corn, and help host Dairy Days (our small town festival).....it's gonna be one busy month!

Frosty this morning

I'm heading out to plant beans. And will probably take a few hours off this afternoon to plant my garden.
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Tilling the last field for spring

So, I finished corn last night, or should I say this morning. Lightning in the south sky moving towards me, small hail and heavy rain reported with the storm...yep that'll keep a guy awake and working hard at finishing up corn. Got home at 3:30 a.m., woke up this morning and only got sprinkles. Feel fortunate since south 40 miles they got over an inch of rain.

Now onto beans.

Grow asparagus ! grow!

One of my top 5 favorite meals. Asparagus and morels...mmmmm.
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Just a little nubbin

Sprout just emerging from the seed, still has about 2 inches to get to daylight. Taproot is a little over an inch. Muggy as heck here today, but with all the humidity doesn't seem to be drying much. There goes my plans to get some planting done again today.


Might as well look for some more morels.
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Planting progress

So, when I got rained out and made it to the end of the field that acre counter stopped at 666.73, out of the 890 acres of corn I have to plant, and the 1040 total acres I have to plant. Been a long week (calculated that I worked just shy of 120 hours last week) but I got a lot done so I'm happy. Still tired this morning.

Most in my area are on their last day of corn if not wrapping it up. We got between .75 and 1 inch yesterday (in about a half hour). It POURED!! Even had a little small hail. We were getting nice and dry, so a lot should soak in, and today should be a good drying day. So I was hoping to get back planting today. I got 140 acre tilled and would take me about 9 hours to plant ( I got a little screwing around to do to get refilled for the next field). More than likely it will not get fit to till my next 80 until after this next front moves through.
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Yummy morels

Got rained out and had time to find some morels.

Getting going

Water pump went ouy on my tillage tractor, so I took the time to get my planter going and get the bugs worked out.

As of this typing I got 250 acres tilled (it was a long night) and 85 acres planted. I HOPE to get all 250 acres planted before the rain tonight.
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Creating SOME dust

Finally got my soil finisher back into the field today. Its not ideal, but it is working. Others in my area doing the same (all agree we are pushing it a little, but hard not to with the rain in the forecast.).
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Picking rock

None too dry (had to back out a couple spots today), but my hope is pick rock today and tomorrow morning, then till ground tomorrow afternoon, and try and plant 80-120 acres Wednesday before the rain. We will see if everything goes according to plan.

Frosty morning

As usual, its a bit chilly this morning, a few snow flake fell yesterday again and the 4" soil temps are back down to 45 f.

I was able to fix some tile yesterday, but that was a very ugly process in the feet of mud that I call my field.

Have a good weekend.

One creek goes down, the other goes up

It is normal for this creek to get out of its banks, and will have to rise another 3 feet before it backs up into any of my fields.

4" soil temps holding steady in the 47-48 range, 30% chance of snow (getting really old) here tomorrow, and I am still trying to decide where I want to go fishing....after reading fishing reports, even the fish aren't very active with this colder weather.

Rain !?!?!

Received a little under 2 inches last night. Rained for 9 hours straight. Have still not started planting and will be delayed at least another week now. Soil is still cold and saturated to the point you can squeeze liquid out of a handful....not good.

This is a picture of the creek behind my house. It is fed 100% from tile and surface water, so when it swells like this....it means the soil profile is full.

On the plus side......night crawlers were active this morning, and I was able to grab over 50 and store them for fishing.....I wonder when I will find time to do that? hmmmmm oh ya now!



I recorded a video yesterday, but don't really want to upload it based on its depressing how nice it was yesterday compared to today.

2.75 Inches accumulated

Topped out there and then switched to rain before I could get a pic started melting pretty fast.

Thunder Snow!!!

It didn't look too bad this morning, I even hauled a load of corn to the local ethanol plant, but when I got home......all hell broke loose.

Here are a couple pics,





And a video of the actual thunder snow will be uploaded to Ag Reports Network later today. Kyle Wendland (NE Iowa)