Martin Family Farms

Harvest has begun....

Well it is official the 2010 harvest is underway. The wheels started turning this past Monday and we are starting to see the effects that mother nature has left on our corn crop. Although we have not done a lot I would say that yields are 25%-35% less than last year on what we have done so far. Uneven emergence, too much water and too much heat are very evident when watching the combine go throughout the field. I will try to get some pictures or video this week.  We have a pretty good chance of rain the next two days so it looks like the weekend before we get rolling again.

This past week we also hosted a nice group of farmers and businessmen from South Africa on the farm. They are in the United States to see and learn about our agricultural techniques. I think that we have a lot of things in common with them and I look forward to visiting with them on their farm someday.

Visitors from South Africa 

Ella is here!!!!!

This weekend Erin and I became the proud parents of our fourth child Ella. She weighed 8.1 lbs and is doing well. After the fourth time I am still amazed at how this miracle occurs and truly blessed to have such a wonderful family.

Oh Yeah we are also planning on starting harvest and plan on going full speed by the end of the week. Early reports are still less than expected yields. I will get some more updates middle of the week.

Early Reports

We are anxiously waiting for next week to get here to begin harvest,but there are a few combines rolling in the area. Early reports coming in are yields less than last year and probably slightly below average. This is probably what we are going to expect as we get more into harvest. Corn is continuing to dry about 1% point per day and it looks like we will be able to go at full speed next week. This week we are continuing to check fields for stalk quality and moisture levels.

Drew shelling some corn at the elevator to test the moisture.

The countdown begins....

It looks like we are entering the final week before harvest 2010 will begin. With all of the hot weather the corn is drying about 1% point per day. We had some corn test between 27%-30% last week. With the continued warm/dry weather we are planning on starting the week August 30th. We did get some more good rains this past weekend which will continue to help the beans along. A lot of our soybeans look really good. They are very tall and have a lot of pods on them. With all of the moisture we have had in the past few weeks they should yield really well. This week we will be crossing the "T's" and dotting the "I's"as we know that it will be our last chance to get caught up before we cross the finish line.

Refuge corn..

I was on top of one of our bins this week getting ready for harvest and thought this would be a good picture of how we apply our refuge corn when planting VT3 or Smart Stax corn this past year. As you can see in the picture I used 6 rows in the middle of the 24 row planter to plant my refuge. This meets the requirements set forth by Monsanto and the EPA.  We plant the refuge to try and prevent resistance from insects to certain traits that are in the non -refuge corn (i.e. corn rootworm beetle).

When are you going to start?

This seems to be the most popular question this week as the hot weather has really put the crop on the fast track to harvest. We did hand shell some corn today in the 30% range. That means we are probably within two weeks of starting harvest. It is kind of exciting knowing that we are getting ready to start the final chapter of the 2010 growing season. We did manage to get some nice rain this past weekend. We had between 1"-2" on all of our farms. This will continue to help the corn put some weight in the kernels and really help the soybeans fill out the pods. The rest of the week we are trying to finish up with all of the projects we have left to do on some of the farms along with mowing ditches, and getting the grain bins ready. Oh yeah, we also tried to stock up with some groceries the other night. I had to take a picture of the kids and Erin. We looked like a train going through the store, 3 carts, 3 kids, a pregnant woman, and myself. Gotta love our Friday nights!

How does the hot weather effect the corn plant?

I attended a dealer training meeting for Heritage Seeds yesterday and discussed some of the current events that we are seeing in the corn field this year. Here is a video of agronomist Dan Childs explaining how the hot weather is lowering our yield potential and what our nighttime temperatures need to be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vHS6yeRaBc

The heat is on.....

Welcome to another week of downright hot temperatures is the corn belt. This is probably the hottest stretch of weather we have had in 3 years in our area. We have also gone a couple of weeks without a rain. One more good rain would be nice to finish putting some test weight in the corn and fill the pods on the soybeans.  I think that we will have some corn reach the "black layer" stage by the upcoming weekend or first of next week. That will put us right on track to start harvest the end of August/first of September.

I have taken some yield checks and am finding a lot of 160-190 checks. These are strictly kernel counts and can be off quite a bit some years due to the weight of the kernel. So far we are seeing exactly what we thought. Quite a few uneven plants and quite a few ears with small kernels. I have also found where a lot of the plants had some pollination problems and aborted some kernels at the end of the plant. I figured that te pollination problems like this cost us 40-60 bushels per acre in lost yield.

Whats in the field ?

It has been really hot this week, but we are still plugging away getting equipment ready for the upcoming harvest.  We also spent some time looking at some fields trying to get some idea of what the crop looks like. Overall I am pleased with how things look considering all of the heavy rains we had. I am still hoping we can raise and average crop, but will not be surprised if we raise a little more or less than that.

We spent some time in the field with one of our sales reps this week. Here is a video  of what we were seeing in the field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TFSNv-NU1I

The countdown is on....

It is hard to believe, but August is here and before we know it life will get really busy. With the continued hot temperatures forecast we are going to plan on harvest beginning in the first part of September if not the end of August. A lot of corn has reached the "dent " stage which means that physiological maturity will be reached towards the end of August on a lot of hybrids. This usually occurs when the corn is about 30% moisture, and we will begin harvest when it dries down to the 25% range.  A lot of farmers do not like to harvest wet corn due to the drying costs to get it to 15%.However, a lot of agronomist's say that we retrieve the highest yield from the plant when the harvest moisture is between 23%-25%.  This week we are getting our trucks tested and equipment out so we can make the final tune-ups before we go to the field.

We have also managed to have a nice rally in the grain markets this week. A wide area of Russia is having a 100 year drought which has put a real scare into the wheat market world wide and hopefully lead to more demand for U.S. wheat. During the month of July wheat rallied $1.30 a bushel and also pulled corn and soybeans along with it. Hopefully this will continue in to harvest and allow us to make some cash sales over $4.00