Focus on Wheat

I just got back from crop scouting from here to Chillicothe and back on various roads.  I can report there are good stands of corn and soybeans along SR 28 no matter which road you drive.  Today my focus is on wheat, my next crop to harvest.

We raise SRWW from Missouri to the Eastern Shores.  It is a soft, doughy wheat used for pastry flour and crackers.  Ohio used to be known for the wheat in Oreo cookies, though I am not sure that is true today.

The wheat all looked good during my journey.  It is well pollinated and looked golden from my windshield but greenish when I stopped to look at it.

Now if we would have all sold it for $9.89 before planting, that wheat just my have paid to plant.  Since we didn't, we have to take what the market bears.  That is about $7 per bushel around here today.

That GMO wheat in Oregon was just enough to scare an over laden wheat market, no matter the type, to not increase in price when other fundamentals says it should.

I had the choice of planting $20 worth of rye seed on some of my acres last fall or $55 per acre for wheat seed.  Since it was early, I chose the wheat seed.  I thought I might sneak an extra crop into my rotation without punishment and so far I have.

The punishment is usually disease and so far we have escaped most of it, though we could have had a lot of Barley Yellow Dwarf and and a whole host of other disease.

I am pretty happy where I am so I won't raise a stink here.  Things could always be a little better but they could also be a whole lot worse.

I love this picture a farmer posted on Crop Talk a while back about down wheat.

I haven't made wheat fall down ever so this makes me feel really good.

Ed