#EarthDay Farmers are Active Environmentalists

#EarthDay Farmers are Active Environmentalists, not Environmental Activists and there is a big difference #Real http://ow.ly/i/iID1W

#CrappyBlogger Alert – 2016 Spring Planting

Well, it’s been almost one and a half years since I have updated this blog, so I will admit it, I am a #crappyblogger.  We are going to work to change that and have at least a couple updates a month here to keep everyone updated on the happenings on the farm and in our lives on the farm.   If we fail in that endeavour, I will refer to the aforementioned hashtag and you can too!

Spring planting got off to a very dry start and the last week has brought 4.3 inches of rain.  The conditions prior to that rain were incredibly difficult to plant in and we only put in around 160 acres.  Now, with ample moisture to plant into and a weather forecast that looks favorable we plan to roll by the weekend on #plant16.

Below are a few photos from the spring here on the farm.

 

Getting the planter ready to go

Kristi and I at some business training working on our business plan

Delivering Producers Hybrids seed to customers

Our son doing what he loves to do

Plenty of help from the girls

Treating soybeans with Fungicide, insecticide and inoculant for #plant16

#Harvest14 Begins on Our Farm

#Harvest14 is off and going on our farm as of a couple days ago.   We look forward to a good harvest and hope everyone else has a bountiful one along with a safe one.   Her are a few photos as we got the first field of soybeans opened up and some ears from when we were out checking moisture on the corn.

Dyland Producers Hybrids 7414 VT3

opening up the first field

Dr. Oz’s Enlist Experts . . . Debunked

Dr. Oz’s Enlist Experts . . . Debunked.

Farm Week in Pictures 4/30/2014

Been a slow last week here from the crop standpoint.  Received 2.5-4.5 inches of rain last week and started off Monday and Tuesday both with rain and another 1/2 inch.  We have around 375 acres of corn in the ground and are ready to roll on both corn and soybeans at the same time here in the next few days.

 

Time has been spent treating soybeans and taking care of the seed business along with coaching my son’s USSSA baseball team. A few pics from the week are below.

 

First baseball tourney

 

 

Treating Produers Hybrids soybeans

Planting corn in a no till situation. This is 4th year corn on corn.

Our first baseball tourney this year.

 

Our Farm In Pictures: Baseball, John Deere, Flipped Pivot and a New Home

Well, after quite a bit of time off from the blog, here we go again.  Been a busy 2013 so far.  All of our crops are in the ground for this year and have all emerged.  We will be raising popcorn, white corn, yellow corn, alfalfa and prairie hay this year.

Our color scheme change. first planted corn field in the background

 

 

We welcomed a full time employee to our operation this year.  Mason is a graduate of Hastings College and had worked for us part time while attending college and playing college football.  He graduated in December and started work for us at the beginning of the year.  We are happy to have him helping us.

Hastings Brickyard Bombers 8u

I have spent a lot of time this year coaching a USSSA 8u Hastings Brickyard Bombers baseball team.  Coaching 8 year old kid pitch baseball has been a great experience.  To see where the kids are now compared to the beginning of the year and to see them start to have some success has been very gratifying. It has been a year of fundamentals and learning how to play the game the right way.  The main thing we want out of our team is for them to look at us at the end of the year and say they can’t wait to play next year.

We broke from our color scheme on the farm this year and bought a John Deere tractor which has brought me much joy(sarcasm) in the form of all the ribbing I have taken from friends and neighbors.

Weather has created some interesting situations this year also.  We have had a flipped pivot, some minor hail, gone from dry to wet and experienced relatively cool temperatures so far outside of one 100 degree day.

We have also decided after two years of subdivision living that it is time to be back on the farm and will start the construction of our new house in the next couple weeks.  The mailbox is up, plans are done and we are off and running with it.  I spend a lot of time talking about the disconnect from agriculture in our society and we felt like we were contributing to that with our children.  There are many benefits of subdivision living like neighbors, kids for our kids to play with, socialization, etc, but we also enjoy the peace, family, responsibility, work ethic, freedom and privacy living on the farm provides us.  So, back to the home place we go!  Wishing you a safe and prosperous spring and summer season.  The Weeks Family

 

The beginnings of our new house at the farm.

I

Everything ready to go for 2013 planting season

Flipped pivot

Wordless Wednesday, Corn Flaker at the Local Feedlot

Baling Hay

Wordless Wednesday: Popcorn in Full Pollination.

Irrigation Season on Our Farm.

Water flowing down a row on our gravity irrigated fields 

 

It has been a very busy summer here as we have been in one of the worst droughts I have seen. We have caught a few timely rains here that other areas of the state have not. Our non-irrigated corn is just barely hanging on. We will have a crop from it, but it will be less than expected. Our irrigated fields look great and yield projections for those will most likely be record yields the way it looks now as we are way ahead on Growing Degree Units and have very minimal disease and insect pressure.

The popcorn looks good this year as do all of the soybeans also. I have included a few pictures of gravity irrigation and pictures of the crops to catch you all up with what is going on. Hope to get back to posting a little more often, but mother nature and kids activities dictate my free time this time of year.

 

 

a pipeline on one of our gravity irrigated fields. The water flows through the pipe and out individual gates for every row that we open manually. It is a labor intensive irrigation process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the lower end of the field that the water flows to and we check to make sure the rows flow through to the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are thankful to have the irrigation on our farms as much of this country’s ag producers are not so fortunate!

Our corn is nearing roasting ear stage and it looks like harvest will be around two weeks early this year.

This is a book we use to keep track of the rows that water reaches the end. This particular field has over 600 rows.