Farming in the 50's

A fellow asked a good question Machinery Talk yesterday. He asked "what's the oldest thing you can remember" as a child. I would word that, what is the earliest things you remember on the farm?

I grew up in the 50's and 60's but I remember back to when I was two and shoveling dirt in my mouth with a spoon beside the old house that is gone now. Mom and dad were getting ready to take me to the county fair and I got all dirty while they were getting ready!

I answered "The oldest thing I can remember is Elmer Yochum cutting dad's wheat with a pull type IH on dad's Oliver 77. That same tractor picked our corn with a number 4 Oliver corn picker with flatbed wagons, shoveled off. I remember the lines of wheat to unload in Sardinia in front of our house, 100 bu was a big load then.

Dad still cultivated corn with his team of Percheron's, Jim and Jane, when I was little but they were old and clumsy and stomped down too much corn. I do remember picking by hand and making shocks a year or two before dad bought the picker.

I distinctly remember dad buying the Oliver 50 twine tie baler with no one to drive, mom hated doing it so he put 5 year old me on the seat! About all I did was steer while he stacked and ran several marathons between the wagon and tractor. I remember being a little scared of making a mistake but I thought I was king!

An NAT friend asked what a Go Devil corn cultivator was and I found the picture and posted it there and for today's picture. I would hate to have to use that tool very long, but it sure beat hoeing in the early days!

Now farmers in the south are hiring hoe crews to chop out resistant weeds in their fields! I hope we are not going back to that or food will get MUCH higher! I have lots of blogs about resistant weeds the last 3 years, especially in the last 6 months if you care to browse.

So what are your earliest memories on the farm?

Ed Winkle

Shoots, We Have Shoots!

I was hoping I would find these this morning, and I did! That's a May Day present as nice as homemade basket of flowers hanging on the doorknob! We have baby corn shoots emerging from planting two weeks ago tonight. For the cool temperatures we have had, that is pretty good. Corn planted a week before that is no farther along in most places.

My little picture shows every blemish, the melting clods, the dying weeds and even a rock in the foreground. That's a problem with ripping, it brings up loose rocks. I have more soil disturbance than I would like but the new corn will soon anchor the soil in place. We just had too much hydraulic compaction in this long term no-till field behind the house after the record rain events since the fall of 2010. 80 inches of water is massive tonnage per square foot.

The spacing is good, less than 7 inches for 32,000 plants per acre in 30 inch rows. That shows you how much this picture is magnified because it looks farther than that between plants. The emergence is what I am looking for. We need all the plants to emerge at the same time as much as possible. I would like them all up in 24 hours and 48 hours at the max. Anything beyond that and the corn plant tends to become a weed with a smaller ear or no ear at all.

If all my corn comes up like this, I will be very happy. Now I have to start scouting for insects as cut worms and army worms are being reported with patches of wire worm and sod grub worms and web worms. I probably need to add more insecide to my post herbicide spray or I may not. I need to get the control down with the seed and I think I have done that. I rarely spray corn twice but I am really trying to get ahead of these resistant and reoccuring weeds. Fall panicum and other weeds have cost me yield before. I won't know until I scout and IPM says I only use the pesticide I need to save money and protect the environment.

So that's good news today. There is lots of ag news like the record corn purchase by China, the government backing off the teen labor farm law, and record planting pace(which is stalled in the east as we speak.)

I caught this interesting thread on Machinery Talk about rebuilt transmission and engines.

Have a great day,

Ed

College Debt

Debt for college tuition is in the news. I find it hard to believe that people on Social Security still owe one billion dollars total for college loans! Now they are complaining their debt is being taken out of their benefits!

One report said the average graduate owes $40,000 now and it's closer to $60,000 if you add the money the parents have also borrowed! One broadcast showed the most expensive college in the United States where room and board is $60,000 per year.

LuAnn had a great idea. She said instead of the stimulus, we should have let GM and Lehman Brothers and whoever else go bankrupt and stimulated the economy by forgiving the college debt and encouraging more training instead of more debt. I thought that made a lot of sense. Most American's agree the $5 trillion or whatever has been spent has not done much good. Nothing is any better after 3 years and few actual, good jobs have been created.

It is good news to see companies like General Electric building refrigerators again in the US, this time in Louisville, Kentucky in a plant that they said hadn't operated in 50 years. The union conceeded wages to $13 an hour instead of the $21 they would have made without concessions. I have been in negotiations as a school board member and it is no easy task!

There is so much going on it's hard to keep track of. I dug corn all day and found anything from no sprouts to one inch sprouts in some fields. Those guys who took the risk in March have nice stands of corn overall. I guess planting time did come a month early as I had suspected!

Be sure to dig in your fields and look for emergence problems, cutworms, weed control and whatever you need to be concerned about. If you have any questions you can send me a picture at edwinkle@frontier.com and will help you the best I can.

Ed

Jazz

Today I want to talk a little about Jazz. I don't mean music like we heard in New Orleans years ago, I am talking about apples. I had a fruit craving so after we saved 90 cents per gallon on our 35 gallon fill up at Krogers, I went fruit shopping. Do you think $150 in fruit and gasonline might be just a little too much?

It was on sale for $1.29 per pound so I bought a few after I sampled the slices they offer. It tasted better than the last Gala I had, and probably as good as the last Fuji I ate. It is crisp, juicy and sweet with a hint of tart. It is a cross between Gala and Braeburn, two good apples. Now I have my apple craving settled for a bit.

I have to share this jazz with you from Machinery Talk. It is about the dear, young parts kid.

"was in a dealership the other day at the parts counter and an 84 year old guy that still farms was trying to get a part. After explaining the part, showing the new parts kid a picture on his smart phone, he still couldn't get the correct part.

Finally, after a bunch of wrangling with the computer, a couple of trips to the back room, the kid comes back and says I'll have it for you tommorrow.

Clearly exasperated by now the old farmer leans in across the counter and the parts kid leans in to hear what he has to say:
"Sonny, I hope when I finally get old and senile, I hope they will let me have your job."

1. "I can say we don't have that, but it will be here tomorrow."

2. "I can say we don't have that, but our other stores have 15 each of them, could I get that here tommorrow for you?"

3. "I can say, I've seen the picture, heard the description, & I still don't have a clue of what the hell you are talking about."

4. "I can say, the computer says it's this, even though I'm clearly holding something different in my hand."

The old man got up and shuffled out of the store after that, and I just had to chuckle because there was a lot of truth in what he said to him. Now, before I get bashed, a good parts guy is worth his/her weight in gold, but many of these new kids have only seen this equipment on a computer screen now days and many times don't have a clue as to what your talking about, or order the wrong thing then want to charge restocking fees, extra shipping, ect. I kind of have to agree with him, I liked the old days when many of your parts guys were old farmers that knew what you were talking about."

Only a couple of decades away from being 84 and having worked as a parts kid, I SEE BOTH SIDES,

What do you think?

Liam is a good guy to share an apple with and really good with parts.

Ed

Excalibre or GraphEx?

I just got another good question via email from a young farmer who is obviously doing something right. His soybean yields are nearly 20 bushels above the county average! He wants to know the difference between Excalibre and GraphEx.

"Is there much difference between the two? Which do you prefer?

I thought about using two different inoculants anyway to get more multiple strands.

Your thoughts?

Not too worried about another $5 per acre. I treat my beans like a real crop with multiple forms of Fert and multiple foliars. I have had 60 bushels beans 3 years in a row which is very good for my area."

My response was "Wow, those are good yields! You are definitely a high yield producer
from my correspondence in your fair state, there are a couple of others but most
are well under that amount.

I prefer Excalibre installed on my seed for convienience. I prefer GraphEx as
a seed treatment over putting on the Excalibre myself. The bacteria strains
and load are similar enough I just go for convenience so I can focus on all
the other little details it takes for those yields.

I am interested in the details of your program if you are willing to share. Each
little step is so vital to yield but varies on each operations needs.

Good to hear from you and each email makes me think and refine my own
operation!" There is my encouragement for the day to all my soybean producing readers!

I have to mention a big thanks to Case New Holland. Their donation to my alma mater reminds me of my first step into the old Ives Hall, Ag Engineering department in 1968 when my eyes bugged out! They had all these farm engines sitting on stands for tuning and training and a few dynomometers! I was in tractor heaven!

I am sure to my wealthier classmates it looked like "old junk" but to a farm boy fresh off the farm in southern Ohio, it was spectacular! I learned a lot in that lab I used on many farm operations and taught to my students for many years. Those principles are still with me today.

Thanks, CNH!

Ed Winkle

Open Station

Luke from Iowa posted on Crop Talk about quitting planting before 10 o'clock at night. He plants with an "open station" tractor like I always did.

"Open station"

came about after the first cabs on tractors became popular 20 years ago or so. Before that, they were all, just "tractors!"

When I was a kid, dad planted corn with a 2 row mounted planter on a Ford 8N, then quickly switched to an Oliver 550 because we wore out the Ford too quickly. He planted like that with the Oliver 2 row mounted planter for most of my years on the farm. About the time I left, he got an Oliver 540 4 row pull type planter and then we rented the White 5100 notill corn planter in 1976 and that changed planting for us forever.

I gave up planting with that old planter for my 60th birthday and sold it to an AgTalker. He just called this morning to tell me a story. He got radishes and peas planted in 10 acres of wheat stubble last summer and then got 7000 gallons of hog manure on it per acre. You can imagine how rough it was but the radishes really soaked up the hog manure and left the ground mellow.

Jim said he planted a plot for Pioneer on it and the rep drove in, scratched his head and asked, "are you really going to plant into this?" I can imagine what it looked like, not quite as bad as those Missouri River flooding landscape pictures from last spring but you get the idea. He answered, "sure am!"

He said when they got done, the rep said that was the nicest job he had ever seen a planter do and the ground was as mellow as could be. That made me pretty proud I hadn't sold a piece of junk, although it really needs a paint job, and the old White planter lives on.

I don't think I could have pulled it with a cab tractor because I like to be as close to the planter as I can and hear all that's going on with the mechanisms and the sound of the seed to soil contact.

On that note, there are problems as expected with last year's seed from certain areas, so keep your bags and check your fields weekly. Also, I had a farmer call me and he tested the 28% UAN he bought locally and it only tested 13%. What's worse, an unidentified chemical in the fertilizer nearly killed his corn.

Farmers, test your seed and your fertilizer, unfortunately there is some junk out there!

Ed

Another Bad Blogging Day

But that is what you get, "for free!" Nothing is free in life is it? I have a bunch of links to share and not sure if I can do it with this basic html editor page but I will try.

The good news is we got a bunch done yesterday! I got 120 acres planted and 175 sprayed thanks to my great help! Thank you all!

We have talked about mentoring recently and I have been doing that and going to my own mentors. I have many great mentors, very special people in my life. I thank you, too!

"Strong Mentors Help Build Character
by Steve Arterburn

Listen to advice and accept correction, and in the end you will be wise. Proverbs 19:20 NCV

Would you like a surefire way to build character? If so, then you should find suitable mentors-men and women whose character you admire-and imitate them.

A savvy mentor can help you make character-building choices. And just as importantly, a thoughtful mentor can help you recognize and avoid the hidden big-time mistakes that can derail your day (or your life).

Wise mentors aren't really very hard to find if you look in the right places (but they're almost impossible to find if you look in the wrong places!). So today, as an exercise in character-building, select from your friends and family members a mentor whose judgment you trust. Then listen carefully to your mentor's advice and be willing to accept that advice even if accepting it requires effort or pain, or both. Consider your mentor to be God's gift to you. Thank God for that gift, and use it.

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are. C. S. Lewis

It takes a wise person to give good advice, but an even wiser person to take it. Marie T. Freeman

The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own. C. H. Spurgeon

The effective mentor strives to help a man or woman discover what they can be in Christ and then holds them accountable to become that person. Howard Hendricks

Character builder
Rely on the advice of trusted friends and mentors. Proverbs 1:5 makes it clear: "A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel" (NKJV). Do you want to be wise? Seek counsel from wise people, starting today."

I thought this was a great piece to share and what I am trying to follow mentoring wise, both receiving and giving.

Here are some links that caught my eye on various subjects:
Fantastic set of pictures set to music, met this man's friend Bud on our trip to Holland.

History of John Deere seeding equipment.

What we waste on lunch and coffee!

Let's see if these work. I will post more as I come across them.

Have a great day, better than my current blogging experience!

Ed