Martin Family Farms

Still waiting..

I am writing this update poolside in Disneyworld as we are preparing for the trip home today. When we scheduled this trip I had no idea we would still have crops to plant. This past week dad has been spraying corn as fast as he can before the rows close and we have to use drop nozzles. We still have beans to plant but we elected to take prevent plant for corn with our insurance. That means we can not plant beans on those acres until July 1. Then we get 35% of our corn guarantee plus the bean crop if we have one. Along with a unusual year comes unusual decisions.

Over the Hump

I think the end is getting closer. We are spraying our corn for the second time and sidressing some nitrogen. We still have 200 acres of beans to plant but thise farms are still pretty wet. We need another 4 to 5 days without rain.

Pretty Unusual

We are still trying to get some beans in the ground. As of right now we have about 250 acres left to plant. The radar does not look good and they are forecasting over 2 inches of rain. It is weird seeing a lot of people in the field on June 15

Fastline profiles Martin Family Farms.....

Check out the recent profile on the Fastline blog about Martin Family Farms.

You may have to copy and paste link into browser.

http://blog.fastline.com/2009/06/11/fastline-spotlight-martin-family-farms-gets-connected/

 

No-Till soybean planting

I posted a new video for those of you who are curious about how no-till planting works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvo7RdzrMgk

Decisions, Decisions....

Well we have finally reached the point where we have to make a decision we never thought we would have to make. Today we have decided to switch almost 200 acres of "corn" ground to soybeans. We applied nitrogen to these fields last fall but they have not been dry enough to plant corn into so we are hoping it will dry up enough in the next two weeks that we can plant soybeans on those farms. With the high cost of nitrogen last fall ($100/acre) we will have a tough time breaking even on those acres with soybeans. If we get any kind of big rain before we get the rest of the fields planted it is possible we will not raise anything on those acres.  (I never thought that would happen)

As of today all we have left is about 320 acres of soybeans to plant. We have planted all the corn we can and about 400 acres of soybeans. We have been fortunate enough over the past weekend that we were able to get quite a bit of work done. The next biggest challenge we face as we try to get the crop planted is to keep up with the herbicide application. We have pre-emerge beans and corn chemical to apply along with the post application on some of our earlier planted corn. By using round-up ready technology this is made a lot easier and allows us greater flexibility to get the chemicals sprayed.

Hopefully we will miss the big rains this week and be able to finish up.

Is it really June

Holy cow.. today I am still trying to get some corn planted. Conditions are not good but more rain is on the way so we have to do what we can. A lot of farmers compare this to 1974 so lets hope we do not have this happen for another 35 years.

Is it really June

Holy cow.. today I am still trying to get some corn planted. Conditions are not good but more rain is on the way so we have to do what we can. A lot of farmers compare this to 1974 so lets hope we do not have this happen for another 35 years.

Corn in June

Its official we are planting corn in June. I think this will be one of those years Ii will tell my kids about. Ii hear a lot of farmers compare this to 1974. In that year there was a lot of corn planted in June. According to my notes this is the 10th day we have been in the field since April 1.