Powerless

We had a doozy of a thunderstorm at 10 PM last night and the power just came back on 18 hours later. I saw a lot of flattened and broken corn around New Vienna from Hillsboro to Wilmington. We got about an inch out of that rain but the wind took limbs and corn down. I saw someone's trampoline lying out in a field like happened to me in a spring storm. I had a pool liner on one farm and a trampoline in another.

Bayer Crop Science has gotten EPA approval of 64 ounces total of Ignite per field per year and a maximum of 36 ounces at one shot. This will help our weed problem around here and hopefully keep Ignite around longer than Round Up.

Round Up was used to sparingly at the wrong time on way too many acres around the world. Now the whole ag industry suffers from it. RR fields are sometimes weedy around here because the farmer hasn't gotten that message and those fields are more yellow than LL fields.

That just adds to the fire that some people think that Monsanto was able to hide the fact that glyphosate doesn't break down in the soil well and decreases nutrient uptake and increases disease pressure.

I got all my fields and farms certified today and ready to file my wheat claim on my crop insurance. I have to humble myself to do that as I am a better farmer than that but Mother Nature threw me a curve ball I couldn't handle this year and my crop suffered for it.

I am glad the storm is over and we got some rain out of it but some farmers have flattened corn. I work real hard not to have small rooted crops so we didn't suffer much damage but there is thousands of acres of damaged corn within 25 miles of this farm. A big Pioneer dealer called my crop insurance agent while I was sitting there to warn him on the coming claims. At least I don't have that to deal with.

Some farmers stripe their corn like I do with two hybrids and the yellower, racier corn is bent over or flat and the greener workhorse hybrids are standing up better.

I could have predicted that.

It would be great day to take Sable back to Cowan Lake if it weren't so muddy from the soil lost because not enough of us notill. I don't like brown water.

Ed