MachineryLink

If you read the Machinery Chatter blog on a regular basis, you will notice that Dan Miller, Jim Patrico and I will rotate through the writing of interesting machinery blog entries. Last week was my regular scheduled week and I began to write about what was going on with my own farm as I haven't touched on the subject since last harvest.

The main point of the blog was going to be that we are very dry heading into the spring fieldwork season. We had a growing season last year with below average yields because of the severe drought, a pretty average winter moisture-wise and no rain this spring -- if you can count this as a spring.

Then I got an email asking me to delay my blog entry for a week. Since I didn't have it completed, I was more than happy to wait.

Wow, what a difference a week makes!

Now as I update my blog entry from last week, the moisture level in the soil on the farm is dramatically different. We had multiple inches of rain for the first time since last May.

One night last week brought in nearly 3 inches, a second overnight storm brought in another inch and a third one had .40 of an inch. There was also a morning last week we got a light dusting of snow.

Drought is still present here in Nebraska but it has been scaled back in both size and severity. As my neighbor said to me right after the rains, "The drought may not be gone but at least we have some moisture to get the crops started."

Now we just need some continued timely rains throughout the growing season.

Last year we didn't get much rain after June and the crops greatly suffered, coming in below average yields. The pasture grass didn't grow back and we had to start feeding the cows hay in July.

In 2011, we got a couple very timely rains in July and August, we had above average yielding crops and the grass kept growing. What will be in store for 2013? I hope more like 2011 than 2012.

We were going to avoid as much tillage as we could this spring since moisture has been limited. I imagine this will be still the case, but at least we have some moisture to work with this spring.

For probably about a decade now we have no-tilled corn into soybean stubble and then have one tillage trip across corn stalks before planting soybeans. Sometimes a second light tillage trip is made if we plant beans late and weeds begin to emerge.

As I suppose many farmers have, we have slowly moved away from tillage over the years on the farm.

Two or three decades ago when I was growing up everything we farmed was tilled. My dad and uncle would disk the soybean stubble once and the cornstalks got disked and then hit with the field cultivator.

Going back another generation, my grandpa and his sons would plow everything and then usually come back and disk a couple times. This is pretty amazing to me considering they milked cows and had plenty of other chores to accomplish in addition to all this tilling.

I can remember only plowing a couple of times in my younger days when my dad got rid of an old stand of alfalfa. We will spray herbicide to kill alfalfa off now.

So maybe this is the spring when we attempt to no-till soybeans into standing cornstalks. Or maybe we will take a baby step and shred the stalks first before going in and planting.

It may be raining now in April, but the key will be if there is soil moisture in mid- to late-summer. I have a feeling dry conditions are not completely in our past.

(JP/CZ)

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