Scouting Soybeans

I am finishing up my scouting for one company and I ran across this draft I haven't used yet.  "I can't believe it is time to scout soybeans again. Another year has rolled by!

Sable and I scouted several acres in southern Fayette County. The soybeans over there are ahead of the ones where I live in southern Clinton County.  They were able to plant when we were not.  I think the farmers there have done a really nice job. Many, many farms have soybeans in the first or second trifoliate stage."

Most of the planted soybeans around here are from just planted to stage V5. Here is a good description from the American Soybean Association:

V2 Two nodes on the main stem with fully developed leaves. R4 Pod is 3/4" long at one of the four uppermost nodes on the main stem with a fully developed leaf. R8 Ninety-five percent of the pods have reached their mature pod color.

Vegetative stages

VE Emergence Emergence of young plants through the soil surface with cotyledons (seed leaves) above the soil
VC Cotyledon The plant has emerged and cotyledons are fully unfolded
V1 first node The first node appears and the unifoliate leaves are fully developed opposite each other
V2 2 nodes Two nodes on the main stem with fully developed leaves
V5 5 nodes Counting the unifoliate node, there are four more nodes with fully developed trifoliolate leaves.
Vegetative stages V6, V7... Vn continue until the first flower appears. Some varieties may accumulate as many as 20 nodes during the vegetative growth stage.

Reproductive Stages

R1 Beginning flower Open flower at any node on the main stem
R2 Full flower Open flower at one of the two uppermost nodes on the main stem
R3 Beginning pod Pod is 5 mm (3/16 inch) long at one of the four uppermost nodes on the main stem.
R4 Full pod Pod is 3/4" long at one of the four uppermost nodes on the main stem with a fully developed leaf.
R5 Beginning seed Seed is 1/8" long in a pod at one of the four uppermost nodes on the main stem.
R6 Full seed A pod containing a green seed that fills the pod cavity is located at one of the four uppermost main stem nodes.
R7 Beginning maturity One normal pod on the main stem has reached its mature pod color.
R8 Full maturity Ninety-five percent of the pods have reached their mature pod color.

Today I find the April soybeans in R4 to R5 and the later plantings right up that scale to R1!  Most soybeans around here are R2 to R3 today.

The soybeans I have selected this year have a brown pod. They impressed me the first time I scouted them a few years ago. They are Ohio Stressland crossed with a Delta Pine Land cross. They are very consistent in yield.

They looked good last night.  So do the Clermont soybeans we planted.  I have a friend who planted Clermont soybeans and call's it "Ed's Field."  I hope they are his best soybeans!

There may be record soybean acres in the US this year but from what I've seen, I don't think it will be a record yield.  There are just so many acres though, the crop is probably good enough to add up to a LOT of bushels.

How do the soybeans look in your area?

Ed

Bumper Crop Of Sweet Corn

Many farmers judge their corn crop by their sweet corn crop.  By this measure, ours should be a good one!

I really wanted to use my free Ohio Soybean State Fair passes today as the hog and steer shows are finishing up and Matt and his FFA Chapter are working in the Lausche Building and Ohio FFA Center today.  My timing was off though and our sweet corn crop needed some major picking today.  We have called all the family and I hope to have all the harvestable ears picked by Monday.  The freezer is running over and we have tomatoes and peppers to freeze yet.

Ice had been creeping up the sides of our valuable chest freezer so we took time to defrost it before we added all this new sweet corn this morning.  You know what a miserable job it is to defrost a freezer but we caught it early and it wasn't bad at all.  It is full again at noon and everything is frozen except the new corn.  It will be in minutes.

We had a hard time planting the sweet corn back in April because Grandma and Grandpa can't bend over like they used to!  We called Madison and Brynn and they helped us plant four long rows fast and two bean rows besides.  They are built low to the ground with nimble fingers.  Thank you girls and I hope you enjoy the food you helped produce and it's feeding the whole family and friends!

I had a few earworms but nothing bad.  Insects are just not bad in our region this year, too much rain and cool weather!  I saw Mr. Fraley pushing Monsanto's GMO sweet corn on Twitter but I just don't see the need for it here.  I've never tasted anything better than the Avalon, Providence and Vision type sweet corns we raise and that covers, white, bi-color and yellow corn.  We tend to freeze yellow corn the most, that's the standard.

The Seneca Dancer we grew first year was awfully good and everyone who bought it called it Super Silver Queen or Improved Silver Queen.  Steve Groff pointed us to the ones I mentioned and I haven't found anything better except the varieties that replaced those standards.  I've never had much luck with Bt corn or sweet corn so I don't pay the extra money for it.

It's a great crop so today we say Thank You Lord for the good corn, the good crops and the great people you've sent us to eat it!

Ed Winkle

1963

I wrote this earlier this year in April.

About this time 51 years ago Ed was all antsy.  Dad rented 19 acres for me out by the water plant at Sardinia, Ohio.  I was nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof but it was positive excitement.

I always wanted to be like my dad.  I still do.  He was the nicest guy I ever met.  He would do anything for you or me or anyone else.  He was a farmer, a true farmer, 24 hours a day for 85.5 years.  I bet he is still involved in farming somewhere.  Heaven is for Real, isn't it?

I plowed my new land, I disked my new land and my dad helped me plant it with that Oliver 2 row planter behind the Oliver 550 tractor I plowed with.  I rotary hoed it three times and cultivated it 3 times.  We limed and fertilized and that corn looked good.

Our 4-H Club and FFA Chapter had tours at our farm at Sardinia.  That was rated as the best looking project of all the group.  I got lots of compliments and I would compare that corn to what our first crop looked like here in 2004, one of the best crops in 50 years.

In September or October, I don't remember when, that all went away.  It rained all month like it did here in 2009 and the White Oak creek flooded and flattened every bit of my corn and all of dad's corn.  We harvested very few bushels that year and the feed mill gave dad all of their corn cobs from shelling to feed his cows all winter.  Hay, corn cobs and molasses got us through that very promising but horrible year.

That changed everything.  We learned to farm more upland instead of just grazing it.  Farming lost its appeal for a bit so we went searching higher and deeper, just like our parents and teachers wanted us to.  That led to a life of teaching children for me but I never lost the farming bug.  I just couldn't be a full time farmer and that is OK today.

I wish I had the photography bug back then like my aunts did.  I had the farming bug, the engine bug and the ham radio bug.  I was too busy to take pictures!

I thought about this while I was driving yesterday and listening to 820 AM, my regular media in my  Dodge Dakota.  I saw guys ripping up some pretty wet soil yesterday on my trip to Urbana and back.

I hope they don't have a year like I did in 1963.

Ed Winkle

They Don't Understand

A farmer friend posted this on Facebook.  I think he is as frustrated as you and I are.  People who don't farm don't understand.

"Yesterday the White House and USDA hosted a meeting with food, agriculture and data industry officials in an attempt to encourage innovation to stem the effects of climate change on agriculture and food production.

Beyond "stemming" the effects of climate change on agriculture however, the way we produce food has the potential to substantially address and even reverse many of the root causes driving climate change.

Here's how:
The overall global food system -- including land-use changes, feed, fertilizer, transportation, refrigeration, processing and waste -- is estimated to be responsible for 30 to 50 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Over the last decade, agricultural emissions have increased by approximately 1 percent per year.

Researchers at the World Bank Group estimated intensive livestock production alone is the largest single contributing factor to climate change. Industrial animal agriculture is also one of the largest polluter of air, water and land, and the largest consumers of fossil fuels and water and yet feed only a relatively small percentage of the world's population, compared with those fed by small-scale farmers who continue to be the major producers of the world.

While the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts global food production to fall by 2 percent per decade for the rest of the century, there is an increasing body of research that shows how agro-ecological, or organic, regenerative agricultural practices can actually feed a growing population while repairing our damaged ecosystem.

Take soil, for example. Some may think that soil is just "dirt," brown stuff that holds plants in the ground. But soil is an organism in itself, and healthy soil is rich in microorganisms,which under optimal circumstances live in symbiotic relationships with the plants. Healthy soils store vast quantities of atmospheric carbon. Improving soil health is therefore an integral part of reversing CO₂ levels.

According to cutting edge agricultural research, including that outlined in the Rodale Institute's white paper, Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change, "recent data from farming systems and pasture trials around the globe show that we could sequester more than 100 percent of current annual CO₂ emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices, which we term "regenerative organic agriculture."

As well as sequestering carbon, regenerative organic and agro-ecological systems can mitigate the chaotic effects brought about by climate change, such as flooding. Healthy soils have structure that allows them to retain large quantities of water. This structure not only holds soil in place preventing erosion, it also allows plants to be more tolerant of weather extremes. Regenerative systems increase the amount of carbon in soil while maintaining yields. In fact, research shows that yields under organic systems are more resilient to the extreme weather which accompanies climate change.

Conventional agricultural practices have resulted in a loss of 30-75 percent of original organic soil carbon, as well as being heavily reliant upon synthetic fossil fuel-based nitrogen fertilizer, mono cropping and toxic pesticides. Regenerative, organic agriculture on the other hand refrains from using fossil-fuel based inputs and instead utilizes cover crops, integrated pest management systems, residue mulching, composting, and crop rotation, and conservation tillage. Organic agriculture also uses 30-50 percent less fossil fuel energy than industrial farms."

I admit soil erosion has greatly damaged our most important resource, soil.  However we realize that now and billions of dollars and millions of hours has been dedicated to changing this situation over my lifetime.  I think we are doing a pretty good job considering all of the factors involved.

One quarter of one percent of our population grows the food, feed, fuel and fiber in this country.  It's a tough business.

All the blogs and rulings in the world isn't going to what that writer is suggesting needs to be done.

We are doing it.

What do you think?

Ed Winkle

Vote For Your Favorite Photo

I entered some pictures this morning in NCGA's Fields-of-Corn Photo Contest.  I would appreciate your vote but please vote for your favorite!  There are five different divisions and I have entered 3 of them so far.

The link should take you to Growing Corn photo's and I entered my favorite.  It may not be my best but is my favorite and I have posted in various places since 2010.  It is a picture of my 200 bushel corn on Horseshoe Road in Highland County, the best crop that was ever raised on that farm according to its neighbors.

That was the year our last rain was an inch around July 17 and it still yielded a record crop on that farm.  We shelled that corn in September and that gave me time to work on that farm all fall.  It never rained that fall and wheat and cover crops were hard to establish that year.  The best thing I did was spread two tons of high calcium lime per acre and that paid me back in two crops.  I am learning the effects of gypsum on my own soil after working with it on others for many years.

I really need to manage my pictures because my pictures are managing me.  I have so many crop pictures mixed in with people pictures.  In a few years most of the crop pictures start to look the same.

There is so much to do right now, I am not sure how we are going to get it all done before winter.  Speaking of winter, these cool days and nights remind us of that a little too much!

To my blog experts, I just accidentally wiped out a week of blogs by deleting Industrious Woman under my draft file.  One delete deleted a week's work.  How did I do that, how did they get linked together and published and drafted at the same time?  I think it has been since I started entering key words again?

Ed

Champion Shorthorn Bull At The Ohio State Fair

My brother and sister in law showed the Champion Shorthorn Bull at the Ohio State Fair this week.  I know our dad and grandpa are proud!

I think dad told me that Grandpa George Winkle bought a Shorthorn herd nearly 100 years ago.  That old Shorthorn based herd was the genetics for the farm I grew up on, a general livestock farm in Brown County, Ohio.

I can't forget the white steer calf dad picked out for me when I was a child.  I showed him at the Brown County fair.  He was wild with blue eyes and I try to forget him dragging me through the show ring and running up the grandstand with women screaming and purses flying.  You know why I love crops so much that feed the livestock.

Charolais cattle had just come to the states and everyone thought this white steer might be a Charolais.  He wasn't, he was an offspring of Grandpa's Shorthorn herd.

Dad and grandpa loved their cattle because they used the pasture and hay we could raise on that farm without erosion and they helped pay the bills.  Beef has always  been a high choice for meat consumption in the US and I always figured they always will.

It takes a long time to build up a good herd so Jeff and Susie have done a spectacular job building their herd to the point they could produce a Champion Bull.  My hat is off to them, I know what hard work it is.

Cattle are record high prices and feed is cheap this year.  The livestock men and women just might be having their best year ever and it was hard earned and high time for it to happen.

Showing livestock taught my children a lot of good things I see in their families.

Grandpa had no idea what he was starting, did he?

Ed Winkle

Cool Weather

It does not feel like the last week of July here in southwest Ohio.  I bet many of you are thinking the same thing.  We seem to be going through a cycle that is much different than I remember most of my lifetime.

You have record warm on the left like 2012 and record cool on the right, 2014, just like the crops in my picture show.

The 70's had times like these but I was a young man full of vim and vigor and didn't pay much attention to it.  I just tried to respond to it like I am today.

The lack of solar activity and everything man has done to Earth has an effect.  No one knows how much.  What is coming?  What should we prepare for?

I am hoping I have enough heat this summer to mature my double crop Clermont and Jacob soybeans into seed good enough to plant next year.  If I don't, my seed supplier's crop looks good and they were planted before mine, though not very much sooner.

The markets are low and if cash is short I can plant soybeans next year and benefit from all of the crop rotation and soil amendments I have applied.  I am at a different stage and position in my life than anyone else and I really can't compare myself to anyone.  I have to do what's best for me.  I have a lifetime of experience to base it on but it's hard not to do what the neighbors are doing sometimes.

As I have said, this weather is great for scouting and I've had plenty of fields to scout.  It's been fun this summer with some days of too much water and a little too warm but overall, pretty cool scouting weather.  That signals in my brain that crops aren't growing like they normally do.

The local fairs are doing well because of this cool weather.  I am very happy for them because I love state and county fairs!  This surely must be one of the coolest county fair temperatures this week.

I have enjoyed judging at local county fairs this month and I hope you all did well.

These record low temperatures have us big picture people wondering what is next!

Have a great day,

Ed Winkle