Nine Month Baby

We just finished up cutting our nine month old baby today, July 3, 2013.  That is what I am calling my soft red winter wheat, a nine month old baby.  We started planting this crop into corn stalks the last day of September and finished up a couple of days later.  The decision to be made was plant something, plant anything to protect the soil.  So, buy the wheat seed for $50 an acre or buy rye for $20?.  Since it was record early for me to plant a winter crop, I chose the wheat.

It was an easy baby to tend to though I took really good care of it.  It got hundreds of pounds of nutrients and over a thousand pounds of calcium applied to it.  It came up thick and strong, never looked back, even though most of it was in corn stalks.  You shouldn't do that around here but my friend from Oakland City, Indiana showed me you can sure do it.  It didn't get enough weed killer but it got enough insecticide to knock down an aphid population that carries Barley Yellow Dwarf virus.  It had some scab but disease overall was not a problem.

Many times I wished I had planted it to corn especially or maybe beans in a corn soybean rotation but the weather was perfect at planting and I chose wheat.  I guess it was a good choice.  It yielded 93 bushels per acre, my best since 1985 when I broke 100 bushels for the first time.

Wheat is a precarious baby, it gets conceived and you have to nurture it along.  This baby turned out pretty well but I really wonder if corn would have made more money this year.  Any corn around here just looks fantastic but this soil will now raise about anything, especially a nine month baby.

Lots of guys have given up on wheat and I can see why.  But it fits my rotation so nicely.  It really brought the Marestail back, that stuff peppered the field.  I hope I can smoke it with my burn down pre-emerge  combo on Friday.  Since I don't spray my own, I have to rely on the man.  The man is not always available, I might not be either if I was in his shoes.  Today is the fourth of July and most people want to celebrate Independence Day with their family.

Yes that is John Deere in my fields again, my AGCO friends.  A man does what he has to do.  Grandpa said poor people have poor ways.

Ed Winkle