October 2014

Crops are up. The only disappointment was the garden. We seeded broccoli and beets. Both were no shows. Everything else is doing fine.

These are our oats:

 

These are our sugar snap peas:

 

 





These are our fava beans and rye:

 

 

We sprayed concentrated mined P&K with seaweed N in a 10-10-10 analysis. This should kick the crops on along. 







September 2014

September was fall/winter planting time. We planted Elbon Rye and naked oats, then intercropped sugar snap peas and fava beans. I used the 71 Flex planter for the favas and broke the seed cap. Favas are way to big for that planter. Should have used the drill.

The old Allis Chalmers All Crop Drill did a superb job on everything else. I could have set it up to drop everything, Including the favas and done it all in one pass.

We can make two winter crops in our zone. One planting in September, harvest in November. The next planting in December, harvest in March. We will then let the grain grow on out and harvest in June. Winter bean / pea crops are: sugar snap peas, English peas, snow peas, and fava beans. Green beans are an option for fall, September - November. 60 day southern peas have a chance to make as well.

August 2014

We spent August picking the last of the peas. Blackeyes. For the record, even though I can pick semi vining and vining types with the BH-100 by removing the first round of picking fingers from the front of the picking reel, they really are not worth the hassle. Yields are way too low. California 46 is NOT really a bush type pea, they are not determinant, and they do not have a concentrated set. I am still searching for such a pea. Arkansas Blakeye #1 is such a pea, but no seed vendor picked it up. U of A should do like Texas A&M did with Texas Pinkeye and produce it themselves on contract to CT Smith.

We sold way more flour and oatmeal this year than peas.  Our new packaging is plastic re-sealable, freezable, vacuum packed, with a tear off top. Customers love it.

 

Currently, we are out of rye. We do have a little bit of oats on hand. We have no wheat. Rye and oats grow really well in our area, so we are going to raise more rye and sell part of it and buy hard red wheat in an amount suitable for us to mill.  I think most of our bean and pea business will migrate to fall.

 

 



July 2014

Pea picking time. The hard way. People really no longer want to pick their own peas. When they do, they will not maintain the discipline of staying in their row. They want to pick over the entire patch thinking they have to,to find peas. This is not the case. Some patience is required and discipline. I challenge anyone to a pick off. I'll stay in my row to the end and you pick over the patch. I will pick more peas. Picking over, you spend too much time moving and not enough time picking, compounding your frustration with the whole enterprise.

We do not do well using this method. This was made painfully obvious to us early on. As usual, when we hand pick, we left 80% of the crop in the field. With the Chisholm Ryder sidelined, we were not able to pick enough, fast enough, in enough quantity to take to the farmers market.

Enter the restoration plan. It was my intention to repair the Multi D. After evaluating my options and looking at the costs, it wasn't worth it. It is to be sold for scrap unless I get a better offer than $1000. Its replacement is a Pixall BH-100. Far easier to repair and to operate. Though smaller, it is a far better fit for our small acreage than the larger machine.

Along with our continuous sheller, our operation can run sixty to one hundred bushel per hour, pods to shelled peas. This is the sheller at work: http://youtu.be/UOkTbWkEjvk?list=UUooo9-r6Pq1-glUwemeZ0Mg

It is no longer for sale, by the way.

The new picker will arrive Saturday, August 16th and the old one is due to leave the same day. The blackeyed peas should be ready soon after.

June 2014

This year we were reminded that there are many other threats to our crops other than weather. Wild hogs ravaged our wheat, then our rye. Both crops were totally destroyed.

 

It was heartbreaking. We had no choice but to replant with southern peas. Our choice was Quick Pick Purplehull and California 46 Blackeye.  By the Middle of June the land was restored and replanted.

 

We sold a few bushel of purplehulls only to discover we had lost most of our market share over the four year long drought and our decision to abandon the fresh bean and pea market. We now realize that was a mistake. The problem was, we needed a reliable bean picker again. That situation was not resolved immediately.

 

Meanwhile, our garden produced some nice squash, tomatoes and cucumbers.



Into the Crop Season

May. Spring came late this year. It is difficult to believe that night temps in Minnesota are still in the 20's! Cool nights have suppressed the growing season here. Watermelons in Grapeland have been lost to the cool temps and pea stands are spotty. We planted ours late, after the corn failed and have an excellent stand of Quick Pick Purplehulls. We also have some cream peas we planted from old seed we had on hand.

Our wheat was wiped out by wild hogs and our rye was damaged.

We applied a tank mix of Tobasco and half a gallon of Louisiana Hot Sauce in 55 gallons of water to repel the beasts. So far it is working. Another three weeks for the rye to mature and I am pretty sure pepper sprays will be common this year.

Bought a box blade and a new tiller from Tractor Supply. Did more bulldozing in reverse with the blade than leveling. Had to shove the berms the hogs threw up back into the holes they rooted. We should have plenty rye to mill and customers are very happy with our flour for the most part. We wanted to have wheat for our bread mixes as rye bread is made up of 20% to 50% rye flour. The remainder is bread flour and whole wheat flours. I am shopping around for hard red wheat to grind.

Postponing the Meadows Mill purchase until our business grows a bit more. I would really have liked that mill. Planting the hog damaged wheat field in blackeyed peas. Plan on cutting these dry in August for sale over the winter.

Our watermelons and cantaloupe are up and growing. No seedless melons. Ours didn't make either.

Most people are 5 generations removed from the farm. We do these blogs and facebook and G+ so that people have some idea how their food is produced. Many people have fanciful notions about how farm life is and who controls it. I am here telling you that we farmers make those decisions. It is our job, sometimes not our only job. Farm life is tough, high risk work. It can also be very rewarding work, though not always in monetary terms.

There is a new documentary out called Farmland. I want to take this opportunity to show my support for it. Go see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_YpdXUm_iM

Bean and Pea Harvesters

I have knowledge of two Chisholm Ryder Bean pickers in field ready condition. They both need homes and are priced to move. Both are in the northwest, but priced where the transportation is affordable. My own is slated for rebuilding and I haven't had time to do it. For the time being, we are out of the bean and pea business.

These machines pick southern peas, snap beans, lima beans and English peas equally well. If you cannot get pickers to harvest your bean and pea crops, the machines may well be your life saver.

April Showers?

A least we are getting rain. Possibly lots of it. This is good for crop development. I am sure we will meet our very modest grain production goals for this year. All this will go into flour and corn meal milling as the summer progresses. We really need a crop of hard red wheat for bread flour and I plan to rotate that in next year. I am going to follow grain with Argentine Bahaiagrass.

There a lot of debate about Bahaiagrass. It is a love / hate thing. It is cheap, easy pasture and cheap, easy erosion control and excellent for wildlife habitat. It is the long term weed and pest suppression characteristics that I am most interested in. Back in the late 70's when I started farming our family property, I noticed a crop vigor that now, 30 odd years later, I don't see. I am interested in restoring that vigor to our fields.

I hope to plant this into a prepared seed bed this summer as the grain crops are harvested. This will require some moisture. Weather is the key to our efforts, but it really doesn't require the same amount of rain as needed for produce crops.

All went pretty well last month. Few malfunctions to ruminate about. I would have liked better consistency from our grain drill, but that was mostly operator error. There are a couple of things I need to fix in that regard, but none are insurmountable.

There is no small amount of skepticism from locals about what we are doing. Generations of deep plowing are hard to remove from the gene pool.

March 2014

Residual cold keeps sweeping down off the high plains. Nights are still too cold for planting in my opinion. The crops look ok. Wheat could look better but is responding responding to fertilization, the rye looks good and the mixed cover crop looks excellent.

 

Warm weather will push the grain on along. Not so much with the mustard. That crop isn't looking so well. Likely suppressed by too much hard cold this year. We will see. Nothing to do but wait and watch, now. In the mean time, get the combine ready.

 

In the vegetable garden, we will start planting in about 3 and half weeks. Yellow squash, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, that kind of thing. No peas this year.

 







January to Febuary 2014.... From the Depths of WInter

Edard was right. Winter is indeed here, or was. Nothing to report other than the cold weather and continued below normal moisture in the western part of the country. Wheat continues to develop, the rye looks better than the wheat. The mixed cover crop looks better than both.

I started top dressing all of it a week ago, but sprayer problems developed and I wasn't able to finish. Word to the wise, don't use 12v DC or any kind of electric pump sprayer if you have a PTO on a tractor. This is the pump I recommend, and my preferred vendor:

This pump will not handle liquid nitrogen or strong liquid fertilizers, but relax, I don't use them. I prefer two types of organic liquid fertilizers. Neptune's Harvest Fish Emulsion and AGGRAND.
Just connect the appropriate hoses and add a tee to the discharge side somewhere you can see it, with a pressure gauge on it. I run it about 20 psi, but whatever works for your system. Just follow the application instructions and you will do fine. I have found both product lines to be highly effective.

When to apply top dress on wheat... the wheat needs nitrogen. That said, our organic wheat is top dressed with fish fertilizer. Though it has a lower analysis, that can be deceptive. The organic fertilizers tend to supply more available nutrients. It also will not burn your plants. "When  fertilizers are foliar applied, more that 90% of the fertilizer is utilized by the plant.  When a similar amount is applied to the soil, only 10 percent of it is utilized." Our results, over the years, have generally been good.

The mixed cover crop is seeded with vetch as part of the cultivar mix. This legume supplies extra nitrogen to the soil and in conjunction with the rye, which is fertility scavenger, makes this cover and excellent soil amendment. This mixed crop is going to be a used as a dead mulch. We have ordered a Caroni Flail Mower to kill the cover crop just prior to corn planting.

This is the 59" fine cut model. We scoured the internet discussion boards looking for a good one and it came down to just two. John Deere and Caroni. New Holland, though they have one listed on their website, no longer make them. Unfortunately for them, their design didn't preform very well. As mowers go, these devices are very expensive, $1700 to $4600 for a small one. The only reason we are going to use one is because of cutting style. This mower will cut the cover crop and leave it in place where it grew. Yes, disc mowers and sickle mowers will do the same, but the flail mower residue is easier to no-till plant through, which is the whole idea behind a dead mulch. The method is called "organic no-till". There are other ways to accomplish this, but we want to make certain the cover crop is dead before we plant corn in it.

We will cut the mixed cover crop when the rye is in flower, early stage when green foliage is at its peak. This should provide us with a dead mulch 4" or so deep. We are using the same method in the garden area where we will grow a few vegetables.

We have an exciting year ahead of us, and God willing, our own wheat, rye and corn from which to mill our flour and meal.

This leaves us with weather. Without rain, it will be another very tough year. That weather is largely determined by the Enso Cycle. This tropical ocean cycle controls the direction of the jet stream which pumps moisture into North America. During La Niña years, this means drought for the central US. Enso Neutral brings slight improvement and El Niño usually brings a wet year. Sometimes too wet, but we won't disparage moisture. Read more about it here.

This is the current outlook for the spring to summer of 2014. Not good news for the west, and it may be a while before the cycle turns favorable for them. As for corn and wheat country and northern vegetable regions, the outlook is certainly better than it has been. If El Niño forms this summer, this will help fix our water problems in Texas, but it is going to be a long rough haul for folks in California. 

I hope to plant larger acreages of wheat next year as the weather becomes more favorable. Prices are still good as corn continues to take up much of the spring wheat acreage.

Spring is coming!