Well, farm meeting season has come to an end. I think I have ate more at conferences and
meetings this last month than I have in my own house. Every year from the end of February to the
middle of March it seems that all the businesses try to plan some type of
educational or customer appreciation event.
Those of you that work for others might compare most of these events to
continuing education. We feel if we
don’t continue to get out and see what others are doing, our operation will not
grow and adopt new technology and practices.
We learned or were reminded about marketing strategies, crop insurance,
ag prices and how they are tied to the world economic situation, EPA’s new
regulations for farms, new techniques and strategies to increase our yields and
how there are radical groups out there that would really like to change the way
we farm and ranch in America.
We spent the first week of March at Commodity Classic-the
national meetings and conference for the corn, wheat, soybean and grain sorghum
associations. I listened to some great
speakers that really challenged my thinking which is something we really need
to do occasionally.
We came back to find that the boys and the cows could
survive a week without us; however, both sets of grandparents were very happy
to see us return as they were in charge of the boys and cows. We are now 90+% done calving. We only have one heifer left to calve and she
belongs to the boys. We are trying to
convince them that since they are on Spring Break, they can get up and check
her late at night. They haven’t quite
agreed to that yet. We will start
vaccinating the calves soon, since the immunity that they received from their
mother’s first milk is starting to wear off.
Most of our wheat was planted in October and is a beautiful green right now. It is actually called Hard Red Winter Wheat. Now that it is warming up and the wheat is coming out of
dormancy(when it is cold the wheat hibernates), the farmer has been busy “top
dressing wheat.” We don’t put all of
the fertilizer our crops need on the field at once. We “split apply” the Nitrogen for 2
reasons. 1. To decrease leaching of the
nitrogen into the water supply. 2. To
insure the wheat has the nutrients when it needs it. We aren’t applying a lot of Nitrogen to the
wheat that is planted on ground that was in corn last year. There are probably other reasons, but I am
not the agronomist in the family. The
corn didn’t use very much of the Nitrogen due to the drought and the wheat is
really enjoying the leftover Nitrogen in the soil. The wheat is getting really tall and this
warm weather is making us all nervous that a freeze could do some damage to the
wheat.
As I said the boys are on Spring Break, we don’t usually go
anywhere due to the fact that someone must stay home and take care of the
cattle that are still calving and would like to be fed everyday. We do have some 4-H activities planned and we
can’t wait to see our 4-H friends and get into the swing of working on projects
for the fair and practicing cooking. Yum
yum!
Thanks to everyone who sent kind works when I told you I was
going to do this. Please let me know if
I need to explain anything more or if you have something you would like me to
write about. When you have grown up on a
farm and ranch and have a degree in Agriculture, sometimes you take for granted
that everyone knows what you are talking about.
No kidding about meeting season. I wish i had kept a count of how many meetings we went to this winter (most local) it was at least 2 to 3 per week, and sometimes per day. If we just got paid to go! It does give us a fresh outlook on the new crop year, added knowledge, and a chance to renew ourselves as people and new ideas as farm business managers.
ReplyDelete