Catch Me!

LuAnn surprised with me with a good NFL tackle this morning.  I was going to my fellowship meeting and she asked to go along so she could work on her marketing course she starts teaching next month at the community college.

No problem, that is until she couldn't get her office door unlocked.  The lock assembly was loose and neither one of us could get the door unlocked.  She even tried other doors, but that key only opens the front door.

On the way back from trying another door, she tripped and knocked me to the ground in a second.  We were both stunned!  I hit the building and she fell on top of me knocking me into the gravel.  I was the only one bleeding.  Now I have two band aids and she has none.  She was thankful I was there to catch her fall though we didn't plan it that way.

When I fall, I hope someone is there to catch me, too!  She is often there to catch me but not always.  It can be a physical fall, a mental failing or a spiritual fall.  Just catch me!  Who depends upon you to catch them when they fall and who do you depend upon to catch you when you do?

If we had a video of that escapade I am sure we would all laugh.  We really all need each other because we are all human.  We all fail and we all fall some way or the other at some time.  Now I was happy I caught her fall because she would be one "skinned up monkey" if I hadn't.

I laughed at ourselves on the way to the meeting but when I got there, it quickly turned to tears.  One of our fellowship had passed away during the week and everyone was sharing their experience with that person.  I didn't know him, not sure I ever met him but I felt their pain.

Life is short and we have no idea how short it is.  It seems like time just flies the busier we are and everyone I associate with is extremely busy right now.  It's summer, it's hot, but the work must be done.  Learning how to pace yourself has never been a quality LuAnn or I possess.  The same is true of most of the people we associate with, but that's life.  There are no slackers in our group.

We are older now and we have gotten a little better at pacing ourselves but we still have that drive.  Our bodies can't keep up with it so well so we must learn to slow down and pace ourselves.

Yesterday we got to slack a little when two of the grand daughters crashed at our house Friday night.  They slept like little angels.  We all enjoyed a hearty breakfast thanks to farmerrob from Illinois who brought gifts of pork last month.  Then, Brian and Miriah from NAT stopped by on their way home to Indiana after visiting Niagra Falls, near LuAnn's old stomping grounds.  We talked and talked and next thing we knew it was 1 o'clock!

It's much easier when someone is there to catch your fall.  That's a great time to reflect upon what should I really be doing right now?

Have a blessed Sunday,

Ed Winkle

Fertilizer

There is nothing prettier than a combine full of grain.  This is a friend's picture of his combine full of wheat in southeast Ohio.  Combines were full of wheat in Ohio this month if they paid attention to planting date and fertilizer.

This field received 200 0-0-60, 150- 18-34-0, Dribble 28 30lb actual at flag leaf stage.  Compare that to the 100 AMS, 100 lbs. 11-52-0, 100 lbs 0-0-60 plus micronutrients mine received.  They both yielded in the 90's which is a good yield for soft red winter wheat here.  My topdress was 150 lbs urea and 100 AMS and a ton and a half of high calcium lime that tests 34% calcium and less than 1% magnesium in April on the standing wheat.

I know of wheat that made 50 bushels across the road of fields that made over 90 bushels.  The difference was planting date and amount and type of fertilizer applied to it.  Fertilizer makes that much difference here.

Fertilizer prices are a little "softer" here so one fellow asked on Crop Talk if that would encourage more fertilizer usage this fall?  I would think so, but my answer is I need to budget all the fertilizer my soil and tissue tests say I need regardless of cost.  "Don't guess, soil test and follow it up with a tissue test" has worked well for me.  It may be a dart board but I need that dart board to have any idea what to apply to meet my next crop's needs.

I can make more money by taking care of the ground I have rather than trying to farm the whole county.  Everyone is trying to do that now and 90% of them have more resources than I have. I must focus on what I have and what I can do.

One real estate agent called me about a nice 100 acre farm he just listed for $4000 per acre.  That is 2/3 of what a piece near it just sold for but that piece had 234 ac almost all tillable and this one only has 30 acres.  Even though it has lots of road frontage, it doesn't pencil out for me because I don't split up farms.

The point is getting a parcel of ground to cash flow requires the right payment amount and not too much debt.  I can't sacrifice fertilizer for rent or farm payments.  It just doesn't work out.

Ed Winkle

Who Will Farm?

The average age of a farmer is now 57 years old and the fastest growing group is those over 65.  Those alone are 25% of all farmers!  Why do farmers work past normal retirement age?

"Working beyond retirement is a fairly common refrain these days — but farmers seem to work longer than most. In the last Agriculture Census, 25 percent of all farm operators were over age 65 compared with 5 percent of the overall U.S. work force.

Why do farmers keep working? For one thing, modern machinery makes it easier to work longer.  “It’s more you use your mind rather than your back, so you can go longer,” said Mike Duffy, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

Duffy said there’s also an economic incentive. Many farmers are making more money today than just about any time in their careers thanks to higher yields and high grain prices.

But there’s something else about farmers. In surveys of farmers in Iowa, Duffy has learned that regardless of the money or new technology, some farmers will just never quit.  “Farmers are farmers,” Duffy said. “And that’s who they identify themselves as. They’ll leave horizontal.”

Bob Hawthorn is that kind of farmer. At 84, Hawthorn’s hands and face are weathered. This year, spring came late, so on a bright April afternoon he was in a hurry to get corn and soybeans planted on his 2,000-acre farm in the Loess Hills of western Iowa.

Hawthorn braced himself against the wind in the back of his red pickup and unstrung the top of a bag of seed corn. After nearly 60 years on the farm, he said, neighbors ask how long he plans to continue.  “They keep bugging me,” Hawthorn said. “They say, ‘When are you gonna quit?’ I think I’ll tell ’em I won’t quit farming till all hell freezes over. Something like that.”

I know how the man feels.  Dad sure felt like that and planned his next crop on his death bed.  Maybe I will do that, maybe not.  I like to travel too much so maybe one day I'll give it up.

I am already planning for next year so I guess not now.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/07/09/4335760/the-aging-american-farmer-who.html#storylink=cpy

Maybe little Joshua asleep on the seed bags will get his chance one day.

Ed Winkle

Flattened Corn

We normally don't get flat corn in Ohio, maybe once in awhile.  I bet there are a lot of damaged acres this morning after yesterdays storms.  We got 1.5 inches Tuesday then heavy storms came through yesterday with winds up 60 MPH, more like what they experience more often to the states to the west of us.  It flattened our beautiful garden and really tore it up.  It even pulled peas and beans out of the ground.

Nothing is rooted properly around here because of the weather extremes before and after planting.  We should not complain because parts of Ohio like Bucyrus is worse off than we are.  Northwest Ohio has had some pretty hard weather, too.

This morning it is very foggy from all the rain we've received the last 2 days and the cool temperatures that are here now.  The temperature has dropped 20 degrees overnight from the high humidity and 75 degrees dewpoint we had before it.  We went from tropical conditions to more normal conditions in one big storm.

I haven't been to the new farm to see if the bottom flooded.  It hadn't yet when Sable and I checked yesterday afternoon just before the big one hit.  We had to avoid tree limbs on the road just to get home 2 miles and I have more Pecan tree limbs to pick up before we can mow, whenever that happens.  The yard needed mowed before this and now it's really wet.  It's going to be hard to get back to normal after these storms.

I am most concerned about the soybeans.  Spray schedules are way off and weeds are everywhere.  We never got the critical burndown herbicide on our best 50 acres of double crop beans that are up in that wheat you can barely see in the background of the picture.  I am sorry the picture is so dark but LuAnn took them right after the storm let up and posted them on her Facebook.

I've got tons of fields to scout in the next month and they are all in bloom and ready to scout right now.  I will need waders to get started.

Things could be worse, much worse.

Ed Winkle

So God Made An Ag Teacher

"If God made a farmer, it couldn’t have been too long after that he realized he needed an Ag Teacher.

He must have realized that he needed someone that could teach animal science digestion principles, read financial balance sheets, teach vegetative plant cuttings and differentiate the instruction for each of his students – all in a day’s work."  (from Kelly Rivard's post on The Face of Agriculture Education)

I was watching Ag Biz Weekly by Orion Samuelson and Max Armstrong and right at the end of the July 4 show, Orion shared a speech he gave for the Illinois Association of the National FFA Organization.  I listened closely and remembered all the things I had done as an ag teacher and I felt very good about it.

Watching two grand daughters show their pigs at the Clinton County Fair this week reminded me of all the pigs my sister and I raised and showed.  I remembered all of the students, sometimes over 30 in one year, I taught how to raise and show a pig as a part of the Supervised Agricultural Experience.  I remembered the joys and challenges of helping my own three children learn the same thing.

Teaching agricultural education is the most challenging and rewarding endeavor I've ever undertaken.  It has given me a retirement where I've been able to do what I wanted to in the first place and that is to farm.  Teaching ag is a lot more than sows, cows, and plows, it's helping kids grow up with a set of skills and maturity most parents would envy for their kids.

I am proud to be an ag teacher.  I am more proud our oldest son is even a better ag teacher than I was.  That is what life is all about; eaching your potential in a positive, moral, grown up way.

Hat's off to agricultural education and the dear ag teachers that make it possible.

"My thoughts" on HyMark Highspots, July 2013.

Ed Winkle

2013

2013 was looking good for north Central Ohio.  Now some people have crops under water with record rains like we had in 1992.

This is a picture of good corn a week or two ago from that area.  I know from past trips up there this is some of the best in Ohio.  The field and the farmer has that kind of history.  That would not represent Ohio at all with wheat not harvested, rotting in the fields and corn and soybeans trying to grow but not far from the same rot and lack of oxygen.

Oxygenated soil is a huge undertaking and all tile does is lower the water table in a field so you might even have a better chance of creating it.  We've talked about lime and gypsum and cover crops and all sorts of ways to try to drive enough oxygen into our soils so we also can raise this kind of crop.

Rain makes grain alright but too much or not enough lowers the yield goal.  The yield goal has been lowered here and most of Ohio since planting time, whether you like to plant early like I do or like to wait until you get a week of dry weather like most farmers do.  We never got one good week of try weather to get everything done.  Tactics to plant a crop in decent conditions were very frustrating and impossible in many places.

I had to post the picture first to even get a cursor to type with.  I have a text editor error on blogger so it might be awhile until this blog returns to normal.  Be patient with us.  Like I said yesterday this is what you get when something is "free."  Even paid for websites have problems and I am no techie.  You know I like to write but not when it doesn't work right.  I am thankful though blogger hosted my thoughts the past 4 1/2 years.  Just this weeks comments from my blog have been encouraging.  Thank you.

This year is not too encouraging though crop wise and in many ways.  We just have to work through this one day at a time.  The rain makes grain thread is on page one of Crop Talk and I can't link to it with a broken page editor.

Have a good day,

Ed Winkle

Refuge Corn Twice As Tall

My friend John sent me pictures of corn in his area where the refuge strips and blocks are twice as tall as the traited corn. Amazing? Some farmers have been noticing this for years, others since traited corn first came out.




Why is this? We have discussed this in depth on this blog. Some say GMO corn is literally falling apart. This seems more noticeable in stress type soils but I saw it vividly the last few years on the richest soil in this country where Herman Warsaw used to farm and over in Iowa where my friend Keith Schlapkohl does now.



John is more concerned about soil nutrition, he thinks liquid fertilizer is a waste and all of his clients only use large amounts of ammonium sulfate and urea fertilizers, phosphate when needed and lots of potash. His program is all built around calcium though and more and more people have gotten on the calcium bandwagon. Most still say however, base saturation doesn't work because the land grant universities have proved it doesn't work. It's funny that many of them use soil tests based on CEC and base saturation of nutrients. Their replicated plots have not revealed to them these basic principles of soil nutrition and plant health through non GMO.



John also uses lots of micro nutrients. The Hefty boys pulled hundreds of tissue tests and found micro nutrients short also. I have used more micro nutrients in the last nine years than I have my whole life. Local dealers actually stock them now but they are often out of them because they can't anticipate the demand for them.



My studies show the problem is complicated and GMO trait insertion may be as much to blame or more than the lack of fertilizer. Most farmers use the mainstream approach though that traits are worth the huge extra cost and so are liquid fertilizers. $6 per gallon for the cheapest liquid blends and $400 per ton for liquid nitrogen will buy a whole lot of lime and granular fertilizer.



This is what I have learned and this is what I think.



What do you think?



Ed Winkl