Martin Family Farms

We are getting closer

Another update from the corn planter. We can see the end in sight but with rain in the forecast and some fields still too wet it is doubtful we will get a good week of work in. If we could have a good 7 days we could be done with corn and beans. We have had rains both Friday and Saturday evenings on some of our farms. Maybe this will be our turn to miss the rain.

Guess what......it rained again

After a productive Memorial Day weekend we were once again greeted with more rain. We have had about 3/4" to 1.5" on most of our farms. We have reached the half way point for planting but still do not have a lot of dry fields. One bright side to the rain is it helped the corn that was planted before the 4" rain two weeks ago. Several fields were crusted over and starting to leaf out underground. Those fields will probably have uneven emergence and decreased plant populations, but at least there is some corn out there. If we can keep from getting too much more rain we should be back in the field this weekend.

Planting corn...

I am updating this from the tractor while planting corn. More rain predicted for next week has forced a lot of people to plant in less than ideal conditions. That being said a lot of corn will be planted this weekend. However we still have water staning in a few fields which need another dry week before we can plant. We will see what the last week in May will bring us.

We did not need this..........

We received between 2.5- 4.8 inches of rain last night in about a 2-3 hour period. All of the creeks are out and there is a lot of water in the fields. Pretty depressing!!!

Hard to Imagine....

It is hard to imagine having another year similar to or worse than 2008, but it is starting to look that way. As of the weekly planting report the whole state of Illinois is only 10% planted. That number might go up this next week but not by much. There was only one day for fieldwork this week. The storms that we received last night and yesterday brought us 1-2.5 inches of rain on our farms. That is not good considering many farms needed a week without rain to be fit to plant before it rained. As of right now we are about 25% done with our corn planting. We have planted the driest fields so the ones we have left will need extra time to dry out. There is a drier forecast for next week which we will need if we want to plant our corn in May. 

Maybe we can plant.....

As of right now I think we will be able to get in the field this upcoming weekend if we miss the rain today. There is still a lot of water standing in places and only certain fields will be dry enough to work in if we can. We need 2 weeks with no rain to get everything dry enough to plant.  Keep your fingers crossed.

View from the corn planter

Here is a video I made of what it looks like from the corn planter. Hopefully, it will give some feel for how planting is done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0RqRBLEDLw