Martin Family Farms

This is historical..

With the latest USDA progress report out on Monday afternoon it states the obvious. We are very far behind schedule.  I do not think it is improving this week with probably only 1-1 1/2 days fit to work if you call it that with all of the soggy fields. There is still a lot of standing water and all of the tiles are running full, and there is more heavy rain predicted for the end of the week.

One of our local elevators put together a chart of harvest progress for the last 25 years based on USDA progress reports. I thought it was interesting. The percentages are the amount of harvest complete in the United States.

Slowest Harvests in the last 25 years:

Corn

1. 2009 (20%)

2. 1992 (33%)

3. 1993 (33%)

4. 2008 (37%)

5. 1985 (41%)

6. 1996 (41%)

 

Beans

1. 1985 (42%)

2. 2009 (44%)

3. 1986 (55%)

4. 1990 (65%)

5. 1993 (70%)

6. 1996 (70%)

 

Another flood............

Friday morning we awoke to another 2.5"-4" of rain across the area. As I am writing this the drainage ditchces are beginning to come out of the banks and flood the fields. Hopefully this will not last long and the water will start to recede tonight. However, all of the wet holes and ponds are still full of water with more heavy rain predicted for next week.

 This is not what we want to see before we harvest a field.

All Smiles....

The past 3-4 days we have had an excellent opportunity to get some of the harvest complete. With all of the warm and windy weather almost everyone was harvesting soybeans in our area. The moisture was running 12%-14% which was good and the yields were 55-65 BPA.  However, all good things must come to an end with a 100% chance of rain today and tonight. The weatherman is saying that we might get another 1"-2" which is not what we need. The ground was just getting in good shape for fieldwork and fertilizer applications.  Hopefully the corn dried down some this week and we can continue with harvest this weekend.

 

UGLY!!

 A lot of farmers and elevators are talking about al of the damage that they are seeing in the fields this year. One of the major diseases in our area is Diplodia ear rot.  A lot of people say this is common in minimum till operations, but it is being found in all tillage practices this year. There has not been any type of pattern that would let us find the cause. It appears that conditions that favor this disease are brought on by periods of wet weather within the first 21 days after silking. The elevators begin docking for anything above 5%. So far this year we have had loads as high as 60% with most fields averaging 5%-15%.

Not looking good....

After about 3" of rain last week we are once again waking up with rain this morning.  There is also a 70% chance for rain on Wednesday.  This is not making things easier.  We thought spring was tough, but harvesting high moisture corn, with diplodia, in the mud 30 days behind schedule at low prices might be worse. 

A lot our our soybeans are ready to cut, but with the forecast it does not look like this week will be good for that. We still have some April planted corn to harvest so hopefully we can get that done.

As of today we @10% done while many people still have not started. 

Top Story.....

Check out the top story from www.agriculture.com on their visit last week.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1255036466601.xml#continue

Crop Pro Tech Tour....

Wednesday we were visited by Mike Mcginnis from Successful Farming. He was conducting the 2009 Crop Pro Tech Tour for www.agriculture.com. The links below are from the interviews that we did.

http://www.agriculture.com/AGOL-TV/?cid=507869917&lid=1387524744&tid=44114569001&ordersrc=rafsbebettertv

http://www.agriculture.com/AGOL-TV/?cid=507869917&lid=1387524744&tid=44111333001&ordersrc=rafsbebettertv

http://www.agriculture.com/AGOL-TV/?cid=507869917&lid=1387524744&tid=44119267001&ordersrc=rafsbebettertv

Happy Birthday!!!

I wanted to wish our mother/grandma/great grandma Martin a wonderful 90th birthday.  We had a wonderful dinner for her this past Saturday night with her friends and family. We could not ask for a better mother/grandma/great grandma and we are truly grateful to have such a special person in our lives.

Looking Wet..

After a pretty nice weekend and start to the week we are getting soaked with rain and looking for more to come by the end of the week.  We have been able to be in the field the past couple of days with the corn starting to get below 25%, however our days in the field this week will be limited. Most weather forecasters are calling for 2-4 inches of rain on Thursday. This is not what we need to see with all of the wet corn and disease, and not to mention the stalk quality is getting worse.  Yesterday was the first day that there was any harvest activity in the area all year. Some people were combining corn and there was a lot of people starting to cut beans. Lets hope the weatherman is wrong this week.