Alternate crops

The stars of TV shows are more often than not meat or fish/seafood products. Vegetables and pulses are usually the side dish, only wheat seems to fare better, with pasta or baked desserts. This naturally translates into a similar orientation in farming, with most row crops grown for animal feed, oil, beer, fabric (cotton). Only a few of these crops are food grade, like sweet corn, wheat or peanuts.

A farmer on newagtalk asked if he could feed oat groats to his livestock, because he could get them cheap from the processing plant as a by-product. What the heck, I eat oat groats almost every morning for breakfast! This is a great human food, not a by-product or feed!
Another reacted to a post on lentils, asking what they were. Maybe we should have had a Michelle Obama long ago to educate kids about food. Just not the egg white sandwiches, please, Michelle!  ;)

On the other hand, some adventurous farmers try their hands at unusual crops such as chickpea (garbanzo beans) or sesame. Chickpeas especially seem to be the rage now, with Pepsi and Kraft's hummus sales progressing at 18% last year (for Pepsico's Sabra, at least).

Production progressed 51% last year to reach 332 million pounds. This year saw a smaller 3% increase in acreage, but the 214,300 acres of chickpeas is still a record high. There's something to be said about growing humus and hummus...


http://www.roanoke.com/news/business/2114070-12/chickpeas-becoming-a-hot-crop-for-virginia-farmers.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=growing+chickpea+for+hummus
By the way, hummus is a healthy Oriental dip made of pureed boiled chickpeas, ground sesame, olive oil, garlic and lemon juice. Chickpeas are also an integral part of North African couscous, and ground chickpeas can also be added to flour for savory pies.

So I wanted to thank those farmers who grow human food or other uncommon crops like spearmint for the chewing gum industry, and ask if there are other farmers around who grow such alternate or minor fun crops.

On another unrelated note, this week was the start of the Jewish New Year, in two months it's the Islamic New Year. The Western world comes yet another two months later but not latest, as the Chinese are riding the Year of the Horse for an extra month!  ;)

Chimel.

Final Plans

Going to family funerals makes you think of your final plans.  No one wants to think about that but I do think most of us would like to have our final plans in order before the big day.

It's easier and much more fun to live in today.  I have so much to live in it would be easy to put final plans off and let someone else make the decisions.  That would be LuAnn for me but I don't think it would be very kind to her to not do for myself what I would like to happen.

Most of us don't care that much what they do with us at that day.  Most farmers want to be scattered or buried on their farm or someplace nice like a farm or the family burial plot.  Since we don't have a family burial plot, I need to do a bit more planning than that.  I don't even know what the rules are about being scattered so that might be out or put someone like LuAnn in a bad place trying to exercise our final wishes.

We are where our oldest grandson Liam was born nearly eight years ago.  Just driving here and being here brings back a lot of good memories.  We remember the beaches and eating out with Will and Becky.  We will never forget Will's platoon members being here for the birth of their first child.  Now they have four children!

Do you have your final plans made?  I doubt it and it's a very personal question but it is good to talk to you about it here on a very informal basis.  Whatever your plans are or aren't, I think we ought to set some time aside to take care of those plans.

We have will and testaments but no final resting place.  I am going to do some more research on that when I get home.  I would rather spend my time planning next year's crop but I need to spend some time on this subject, too.

It is beautiful here in North Carolina and I hope it is wherever this finds you today, too.  Have a great day and weekend!

Ed Winkle

600 Miles Of No Corn

We drove 630 miles today with no corn, well, very little.  We finally saw some near Benson, North Carolina and the last field was in West Virginia.  The corn down here looks dead from the road though I have not had time to wander out in any.  We did see one small field harvested, the fellow probably needed corn for his livestock.

We are near the ocean in Wilmington, North Carolina for a funeral.  It is a quick trip down and a quick trip back home.  We did get to enjoy breakfast with my sister this morning at the Bob Evans restaurant near Rio Grande.  We can count on one hand the times we've seen each other in the last year so each time is special.  Of course, I had to tell her friends that I went to China with Bob for a month back in 1985.  People that work for the company or knew Bob are always amazed to hear that.  Linda chirped in that I lost a lot of weight on that trip and I did.  I said they served every part of the duck but the quack!  I am not a fowl lover you know.

Maybe we will have a little more time to spend together on the trip back home.  First, we are here to remember LuAnn's Uncle Joe who had a positive influence on her.  He always wanted her to go to college and she did.  She is a proud Xavier grad now like Tara, Matt and Kevin.  Xavier has been good to us and we've been good to them!

I am still a Buckeye though so we have to support our Land Grant College.  North Carolina is known for its universities so we are in the land of higher education.  They need it with no more corn fields than I saw on the way down!

Of course our trip goes through the mountains from the Appalachians to the Blue Sky foothills of the Smokey's.  It sure was "smokey" most of the morning in the early morning fog.

This old guy hasn't drove that far for quite a while so yes I am tired!

Time to clean up and go to the visitation.

It sure was a beautiful day but it got old being couped up in the car.  I needed some corn fields to go look at.

Ed Winkle

Beautiful Weather

We are in a streak of beautiful weather.  Is that what it takes to raise a good crop?  If you follow the CME crop prices, you would think so.

Recent crop tour reports are all over the board but the main thread is the crop is not as good as the market is bidding for and that showed in last week's grain price spike upward.

I am busy lining up next year's crop, which hybrids will I plant on what farms, how much corn versus soybeans and do I plant wheat again this fall?  I will only plant wheat if I get some soybeans off early and can no-till the wheat right into the bean stubble.  It takes an extra week for wheat to come up no-till since the soil is cooling off instead of warming up like it does in spring.  Two weeks earlier worked out well for me this past year.

I like wheat for cover and to throw the pests out of rotation.  That has great value for me.  I like melting the residue back into the soil with my dry fertilizer and biological program to make the soil more fertile for future crops.  Price wise, wheat is not worth considering unless I can raise 100 bushels per acre consistently.  You can't depend on that here in southwest Ohio though we have been close to that the last two years.  The 2011 crop was drowned out due to double rainfall.

My 50 bushel APH double crop soybeans got dinged a couple of times the past few years.  They might do better when I can raise them like these.

Spreading everything evenly is a huge job few do well in my book.  From residue to lime and dry fertilizer, a very even spread is critical to all operations.  As SouthernOkie answered to this question this morning, "what does better growth in the chaff mean?......"

 "The chaff in your wheat field is serving the same purposes as...the field wide tall rye we drill summer annuals into and then roll to form a mulch mat in plots...the same principle why we brush hog cool season plants residues to release warm season pasture (rather than let the CS residue stand and weather/oxidize)....mimicking SOME of the benefit seen by a leaf litter soil surface mulch model in closed canopy timber. The benefits are: 1) marked reduction in soil water evaporation rate, 2) lower soil temps overall and fluctuation in daily soil temps, 3) a good home for soil animals and microbes, 4) extended shallow root feeding time for plant roots during drought, 5) continuous canopy = fewer weeds, 6) etc etc

But...not all is 'a bed of roses'....the thickness of residue windrows and chaff piles may not soil compost sufficiently to preclude harboring of wheat pests afflicting the next wheat crop. A good home can have both 'good citizens' and 'black sheep' living under the same roof...not always in balance. The problem is the 20' header and a residue handler which won't throw an even 20' residue pattern back on the field.....per Dr. Dwayne Beck, the grandfather of no-till.

The strips you observe are real and good...if you read into Culler's philosophy(and many others I might add)...now you can imagine how the whole field might look if the residue were spread evenly over each acre inch rather than 'wind rowed' and baled! And WHY we broadcast and preach  dry fertilizer/manure spread evenly!

The nice thing about good no-till....it makes you think (really think) about the whole farm program...not just a planter! You have to think before you can see...and think about what you do see!"

I can't say it any better than my friend just did.

Ed Winkle

Labor Day Weekend

I posted some pictures I took over this Labor Day Weekend to my Facebook account.  It is an easy place to post pictures.  Jeff Littrell posted his pictures of his week long trip from Minnesota through Iowa to Ohio and up to northwest Ohio, Michigan and back to Minnesota.  They are worth looking at, even if you have to join Facebook to do it.  I don't think you do and many refuse to participate.  That's a personal decision.

It's no worse than me giving my information to Google through this blog.  January will mark five years of posting a blog nearly every day.  Thank you followers and readers.

As I posted those pictures, I saw what a busy holiday it was for us like so many other people.  It starts out in Rushville, Indiana at First Choice seeds and takes us to Columbus for a birthday party, back to church in our own community and ends up in Hillsboro where LuAnn works and we visit often.  We watched Corbin and Claire show their first pigs last night at the Highland County Fair Open Barrow Show.

Corbin did a great job showing his "crazy Abt pig."  Our son in law Kevin bred pigs that showed all over southwest Ohio this summer.  Their unique breeding made them a little different from confirmation to personality so we have to tease him a little.  Corbin was able to keep the pig off the rail until the last few moments when the pig got tired and stubborn.  Claire wasn't so fortunate as her pig pretty much stayed near the gate he came out of.  A four year old doesn't have much force against a 270 lb pig.  They both did a super good job though and we were proud of them.

It was a great weekend and we even got a little bit of rain out of it.  Kentucky got up to 4 inches which should help the soybeans, especially since many of theirs are planted after wheat.  The Midwest varies greatly, though.  I hope you got what you needed but I hear most did not.  We could have stood 2 inches this weekend pretty easily but .3 is better than none.

LuAnn's uncle Joe passed away yesterday so we are headed to Wilmington, North Carolina Thursday for his service.  Joe was very influential on LuAnn like my aunts and uncles were to me.  Wilmington is where we travelled eight years ago for the birth of our grand child Liam.  So much has happened in eight years!

We have Canadian cool air this morning so fall is in the air.  It won't be that long until harvest and the silage choppers have already started chopping across the country.

Another crop year is coming to the start of its close.  Have a great day and a great week!

Ed Winkle

The Switch Has Turned

The May beans are not upright anymore, they are crouched down in the final stages of reproduction, pod filling.  The corn has went from bright green to yellowing as the summer season winds down.  It is only 3 weeks until the fall or autumnal solstice.

"I live on some wet bottom clay soils, so drought is an inconvenience, even 30 miles away is some light ground where lack of rain is a serious thing.

Today looking at the crops here, it is like a switch was flipped. Yesterday it was stressed and all, sure its dry.

But today, wow, bean rolled in patches on the fields, corn is turning brown on the bottom leaves, brown on the top leaves.

Very sudden change, this heat just caught up to everything."

We can say the same in Ohio and it isn't heat and it is lack of moisture.  Do we really know what we are looking at?  Is it tillage or the lack of it?

Do you have restless tillage syndrome or lackluster no-till religion?  After another summer of scouting, either one will fail you.  I've seen tilled and no-tilled fields look good then peter out before the switch turned.  The most eye catching thing I saw was planting date.  The fields planted May 21 look best with May 15 coming right behind.  All other planting dates fall short as far as crop progress to this date here and in other states.

Still, those dates have some beans "rolling" and 112 day corn that looks like it is a month or two farther ahead.

Isn't there more to this than tillage, no-till, drought, flood, heat cold?  Isn't it more than lack of gypsum and cover crops to build soil water holding capacity?

This picture on Crop Talk from my friend Brian in Indiana taken on his way to Missouri looks like the top of corn fields around here, even though we have had better growing conditions than they have.

Ed Winkle

The Farm People Are Coming!

We just got home from a 2 year old grand daughter's birthday party.  Her four year old brother had to call her grandpa up and tell him the farm people are coming!  He asked him, do they have names?  He quickly said, grandma and grandpa!  You know them, the ones who live on the estate!  We had to laugh at that one, out of the mouth of babe's Art Linkletter said.

He was has been here to ride the snowmobile or the Mule many times and the whole deal definitely left an impression!  Of course, his grandma Lu and dad are always asking him if he wants to go to the farm or ask if he had fun there.  Isn't that funny how non-farm people see us down on the farm?

We had to bring the $50 peach pie from the auction here at Dinner in the Fields.  We found out Leadership Clinton made $1300 from that auction and with a $2500 matching donation they cleared $8000 to keep the Dinner in the Fields and other activities going!  I think that is grand!

How we speak with our fields and how we treat our city cousins are important.  The smallest gestures can make the most impact.  There are so many ways to impact people more than big media does and we all know they don't always do a very good job!

They always ask at this time of the year, how are the crops looking?  It's hard to tell them that the once pretty green fields are dying prematurely.  How could late May corn be dropping ears in late August?

 LuAnn is getting it.  We had a good discussion about glyphosate, GMO's, and Goss's Wilt on the way up.  She can pick it out now from the car.  We just watched US Farm report and the "drought damaged" corn they were showing.  She said there it is, on the ears and stalks, just like you showed me!  The video footage showed black lesions on the ears and the stalks that was visible from 1000 miles away from our easy chairs.

How can we grow corn like our handful of friends are growing?  Look at my old posts and keep reading and looking and asking questions.

There are no dumb questions.  The farm people are coming!

Ed Winkle