March 2009 | Lefebure

Lefebure.com / Farming / 2009 / March 2009

2009-11-30
Combines are cleaned up and the wagons are put away. We didn't get much rain since we finished harvest, but it was enough to make things muddy again. We've been chopping corn stalks and chisel plowing the stubble for the past few days. Initially we started running at night after the frost had set in a bit, but the ground is now dry enough that we can run during the day. We're nearly done with the tillage.

2009-11-23
Finished corn harvest today at dusk. Good timing too, rain is forecast for the next several days. The train is the local RR building up a unit train of empty grain cars from the local ADM plant.

2009-11-22
The weather has been stunning the last few days. Almost t-shirt weather, which is unusual for late November.

2009-11-21

2009-11-20

2009-11-17
It rained overnight, and scattered showers today. We transferred grain to the flat storage.

2009-11-16
Today we worked on a field right next to a creek. As you can see, it still had standing water in places, despite our dry weather for the last few weeks. Surprisingly, there was a good base and we didn't get anything stuck. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow, so we wanted to get this one done before it gets any wetter.

2009-11-15

2009-11-14

2009-11-13

2009-11-12

2009-11-11

2009-11-10

2009-11-9
We've been demoing a 7010 for a couple days, and it will run circles around our 88s. We're still finding some mud, although the fields are starting to firm up. Started NH3 today as well. At about noon, the sun had a halo - that's not an effect from the camera optics.

If you look closely at some of the pictures of corn, you can see the effect of latency on the hydraulic drive circuit on our new planter. Slow to start means exceptionally wide spacing between plants. Slow to stop and it overpopulates with only 2-3 inches between plants. This is impossible to see on the yield monitor, but I estimated 1 bushel of lost yield for every spot where this occurs.

For all of you urban readers, I would just like to remind you that I get to watch the sun set every day. Some days it is quite spectacular. Today was one of those days, although my camera cannot capture it.