Martin Family Farms

Still looking good

Well a lot of the mess is picked up from the tornado and now a lot of people are deciding what to do with their homes and farms. My insurance adjuster is going to wait a little longer to see how much of the corn actually dies. The weather service did say the the tornado was an F3 and was on the ground for about 24 miles in Logan County. 

Also this week we have been repairing waterways from the spring floods and trying to finish up some mowing. The kids stared school this week so it is a little quieter around the house. The rest of the crops are looking good, but there are some cold temps predicted next week here. A couple of nights with lows in the mid 40's  will only delay harvest farther.

Next week is the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, if anyone is coming through the area stop by and say hello.

What a storm!!

For the most part we have been blessed with ideal growing conditions after we got the crop in the ground.  This week we have received almost 3 inches of rain and very mild temperatures, however the storm that hit us on Wednesday afternoon left some marks. There is no official word, but it is pretty evident that a tornado swept through a long stretch of Logan County. Thankfully nobody was seriously hurt, but several of our friends and neighbors lost their homes. We personally did not have any damage but we did have one field that took a direct hit. We spent all day today helping one of the neighbors empty out their house which was knocked off the foundation and will have to be destroyed. Several others had their belongings scattered over several acres.

The beauty of living in a rural area is everyone came out to help today and a big mess became less of a problem  for the people who were hit the hardest. The sad thing is it is only the beginning. Now they must figure out what to do with their belongings, homes, and lives. With harvest approaching in another month it will be a stressful time. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those who have been affected.

Finally Summertime

With one week until school starts it is finally feeling like summer around here. This past week we have been camping, fishing, swimming, and went to a cardinal game. It sounds like a lot but the kids (and us) like to keep busy.

Around the farm we have been mowing ditches and cleaning up bin sites etc....I have also been looking at several fields trying to get a better idea of what we have out there. By just taking kernel counts I think we will have some pretty good corn. Even the corn planted in June looks like it has potential to make in the 170's. We still have a long way to go, but at least there is potential. 

 

Sweet Corn is Ready.....

We have finally managed a somewhat normal week around here. Everyone is back from vacation and no trips to the doctor or hospitals.  The first sweet corn planting is all ready. We will probably pick everything that is ready this week and we will have another batch that is ready in about 2 weeks. This is probably some of the best that we have ever had.

In the fields this week we have been blessed with more moisture. On Monday we had 1/2" to 1.5" on all of the farms. There was some wind but it does not appear anything was snapped off. The corn is looking a lot better and I am predicting  we will have a crop similar to last year. The only thing that this crop has lacked is a good planting date. This next week it looks like we are going to get some heat and humidity so that should keep us from getting further behind.

Happy Birthday to our youngest son Luke who turns 2 on August 10!!!!

Dad and Drew picking sweet corn.

Is it August Already?

 Where is the time going? With such a late spring it does not seem like it should be August already. This has been a crazy week. We have been trying to finish up with end of year seed paper work and miscellaneous office work which has not worked out too well. Maybe next week will be better. I did manage to get Drew to a cardinal game this week and I attended the field day at Precision Planting.  As usual they put on a very informative meeting and I came home with somee new ideas that we might try on our own farm in the coming year.  One of the most interesting facts of the day was that a corn plant can produce up to 6000 miles of roots. 

This past week we also spent some time with our Heritage agronomist Rob Mohr. We scouted fields for disease and spent some time digging roots to look for insect and compaction problems from this past spring.  We are still seeing some disease pressure in the corn but it has not moved close to the ear leaf yet and the roots we dug up looked pretty good. It appeared that the insecticide did a good job on the refuge corn and the VT3 corn did not show any insect damage.