Martin Family Farms

4 in row....

Well we made it through one big rain last week and on Saturday we got another one.  Between 1.5"-2.0" fell in about an hour to give us almost 4" of rain in a 4 day period in our area.  That is not what we needed as we are now facing the fourth year in a row of losing all of our ponds and several acres of bottom ground to flooding.  I am guessing we have about 5%-10% of our ground that will now have to be replanted if the water ever goes away and dries out.   Hopefully, it will dry out because we need to start our post emergence corn herbicide application as soon as possible because with all of the warm wet weather the weeds are coming on fast.  On the brighter side we did kick off the summer baseball season last week and are looking forward to another fun filled baseball season.  Drew is in Pinto this year and has already knocked in one home run in his first game, and Alec will be starting t-ball in a week or two. 

 

 

Too good to be true....

    Although we have gotten off to a pretty good start, mother nature has decided to give us another set back as we wake up this morning and see what the heavy rainfall has done to a lot of the fields.  It is hard to be upset knowing that there are a lot of people who have had their lives changed this week due to the heavy storms and tornadoes, but it is frustrating because this is the fourth year in a row that the creeks have came out and ponds filled up in the late spring after the crops are up and looking pretty good in those areas.  We have had between 1.5" - 3.5" of rain on all of the farms this week.  We are pretty much done with all of the field work except for the spraying. We have one more field to sidress 28% on and then start the post emergence corn herbicide application.   In the meantime we will keep our friends and neighbors who have been effected by the major flooding and storms in our thoughts and prayers.

 Sidressing 28% nitrogen on corn

Its over....

    If someone would have told me a month ago that we would be done planting with everything on May 20 they would have been crazy.  However, with several long days and nights that is exactly what happened.  Yesterday we finished our last corn replant and finished up with our soybean planting.  Hopefully that will be it but with the forecast for some heavy rain this week I am not unhooking the planter yet.  Our first soybeans should emerge this weekend and the last planted corn is just now coming up. Now we are trying to sidress some 28% nitrogen on a few fields and get caught up with the  spraying. It is nice to be done, but still can not help but think of our friends in the south who have just started planting this week and some not even at all.  It is a reminder to be thankful for the weather we have had even though it was a challenge to get planted.

Whew.......

    After a twenty day break due to the rain we have been on a extremely good run for the last 10 days. It has allowed us to finish up with corn planting and get  a good start on soybean planting.  With all of the warm weather a lot of the corn we have been planting has been emerging in about 6 days.  This is amazing because it is not going to be that far behind the early April planted corn that took 3-4 weeks to come up. Most of our early corn has a good population, but we did have to replant several acres of ponds and thin spots from too much April rain and cool temperatures.  Overall I feel a lot better than I did 3 weeks ago and just hope we can finish up the planting season with out any problems.  This being said I have to keep praying for our friends in the south who have gotten very little if any field work done and some have completely lost their farms.  It is hard to imagine what they are going through.  

 Luke checking soybean planting depth
 Alec helping me fill the planter

Almost There

After a twenty day break from dry weather mother nature has given us a pretty good window to get some more planting done. As of today we are 75 percent done with corn planting. If we can work most of this week we should be able to wrap up corn planting. Then we will have to replant some of the ponds that drowned out on our early planted fields and get switched over and ready to plant soybeans.

A little at a time....

 
    We were finally able to get back into the field this past week on Wednesday afternoon. Then we got rained out again on Thursday evening.  In the meantime we were able to cross a few more farms off of the list as we did get some more planting done.  It had been 20 days since we did any field work.  Yesterday was the first day all year that you could look around and see lots of planters going in our area.  We still had to pick and chose which farms to plant because there are still some wet areas that will need 2-3 days of sun and heat before they will dry out.  Warmer temps are predicted for next week, but along with that is on and off rain chances. If we could have a food 4-5 day stretch of dry weather we could have a lot of the corn planting done. Corn that was planted early is looking better after the last few days of sun.  As of yesterday we are about 150 growing degree days behind last year at this time.

Here is a picture of a corn plant trying to get through the top. It always amazes me how strong the plant is to push up through all the heavy soil.