Martin Family Farms

A New member of the family.......

This past week my brother Derek and his wife Renee and big brother Dean welcomed Reed William to their family.  Everything went well and they are now home.  Congratualtions to them!!

Drew, Dean, Alec, Reed, Luke
 
Reed William

Big week ahead...

As we enter the first full week of April Mother Nature looks like she is going to cooperate a little. We did get another 3/4" on Sunday which gives us a total 1.5" for the past week. There is a little water standing in places, but with mid 70's predicted for middle to late week it should dry out quick. We are hoping to get some corn planted by the end of the week into the weekend.

The flu bug has finally passed through our house. The past two weeks were pretty ugly in our house. We are ready to open some windows and get outside.

On a bright note Erin and I will be going to the doctor on Tuesday to find out what our fourth child will be. Will it be boy #4  or the first girl in the family? Stay tuned!

Threepeat....

Well so much for the good week of weather. As soon as I wrote the last blog they put rain back in the forecast and today we are getting wet. We are starting to get the same feeling we have had the last two years heading into April. This makes the third wet spring in a row. In our area we were about 2-3 days away from doing some fieldwork. We did get the corn planter, and NH3 toolbar out and ran them to make sure everything is working. If we get any significant amount of rain we will be pushed into the second week of April.

We are taking delivery of our trees today, so hopefully we will be able to get some of the CRP acres planted in the week ahead. This year our tree planting business is down quite a bit. A lot of the ground that needed to be in CRP already is and with higher commodity prices the last few years putting ground into CRP is not as economically beneficial as raising a good corn crop. However, if a new sign up period begins after the last two wet years I think there will be some more people enroll in the program. 

Good Week Ahead....

We were lucky enough to miss the rain this past weekend which gives us hope for possibly doing some field work the end of the week.  The forecast is for warm and sunny conditions. The water tables are starting to drop and most of the water that was standing in the fields is pretty much gone. Keep your fingers crossed!

We are also fine tuning our marketing plan before the planting intentions report from USDA next week. It is hard to predict what will happen with this report, but it will be the benchmark for planted acres this crop year. We are getting our soybean sales at a comfortable level this week just in case those acres come in high. We are still sitting tight in the corn market, thinking there will be a decent rally in the days ahead.

Upstream Heroes

We recently had the honor of being selected "Upstream Heroes" by the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC).  This is a newly formed organization that promotes environmentally sound and profitable farming practices.  We would like to thank the CTIC for selecting us for the award.  For an article and more information about the award click on the link below.

http://www.agweb.com/FarmJournal/current/Article.aspx?id=156425

Still wet...

Well as we enter the halfway point for March any hopes of doing any fieldwork keep getting crushed. We did have warm weather this past week, but it also came with 1.3" of rain. This coming week does look warm and sunny with only a small chance of rain.

This week we will be fine tuning the corn planters, finish getting our seed and putting everything in place that we will need when we finally get in the field. Everyday we have a discussion of what our plans will be for different fields in regards to tillage. In a normal year we would just plant into our strips,but due to the wet fall we only have 80 acres of strips made. We are going to try and stick to our plan of planting mostly corn, but are ready to go to plan "B"  and "C" if needed. A lot of important decisions will be made in the next couple of weeks and hopefully mother nature will make those easier that the past two years.

Land Sales last week.

Last week was a big week for land sales in our area. There had been some  farms sell over the winter in the area , but sales have been pretty slow. Here is what some of the sales were. These were all held at public auction.

Sangamon County 310 acres--$8300/acre

Macon County 160 acres -  $7600

  27.5 acres $7025

79.9 acres $7000

   Logan County  90 acres $6800

  142 $6550

140 $6800

Overall they were some pretty strong sales, and probably a little higher than I would have guessed.  Buyers consisted of mainly investors, with a few farmers on the smaller tracts. To me this means that there is still a lot of interest in agriculture and farm land despite less than favorable economic conditions.

Back Home...

Back home after a long but very productive week at the Commodity Classic. It is amazing to see how all of the commodity groups and producers come together in the best interest of all of agriculture. We will continue to try and tell our story and educate people about our farm and agriculture. We need to do this to help ...educate the public and tell them the truth about rural america.

Day # 3 at the Commodity Classic

Well my last and final day in Anaheim has proved to be a very interesting day. I was part of a panel that talked to over 150 of the nations top producers about technology on our farm and how others can use it to make it pay for them. The presentation went very well with lots of good questions.

This morning I went to watch a live taping of the US Farm Report with various market advisers. The thing that I think they all agreed on was to sell more corn than normal if we get a rally before summer gets here.

After that session was over i went to listen to Secretary of Ag Tom Vilsack speak. This is the first time that I have heard him speak and I was very impressed. He stressed how important rural america is to the rest of the country and the commitment he has to the rebuilding of rural america. Some of the interesting stats that he provided us with are: 1 farmer has the ability to feed 150 people-----Agriculture has a trade surplus of 22.5 billion dollars----The last five years we have lost 40,000 farmers-----45% of the men and women in the military are from rural areas.------1 of every 12 jobs deals with ag.

I want to thank Successful Farming for allowing me to work with them at the Commodity Classic.

For more info on the Classic go to www.agriculture.com

Day 2 of Commodity Classic

Well day two is over and I found today to be extremely informative. Today I went to three different sessions. The first dealt with fertility,tile, and how we are treating our soil on our farms. The next two were on portraying a positive message and how to use social media in ag. They were taught by Michele Payn- Knoper who is an excellent advocate for agriculture. After all of the sessions were over I got to experience my first ever "tweetup". For those of you who do not know what this is, it involved a group of people involved in ag who use twitter meeting in a common location. Several of these people I communicate with on twitter, but have never met them. Today was the day that we put a face with the name.

Today was also the opening of the trade show. I was able to see several new things that are coming in the world of agriculture. One of the neatest things was the restored John Deere 4020(picture). I registered to win this tractor so lets keep our fingers crossed.