Catching Up on the Happenings On Our Family Farm

Many things are going on here at our farm this winter. We are spending time doing crop planning, receiving seed corn, booking chemicals, repairing equipment, building a few things and the list goes on and on.

Seed corn being unloaded at the Producers Hybrids facility in Battle Creek, NE. All seed corn is harvested on the ear, unlike commercial corn, popcorn, or white corn. This is the seed we will plant in 2013.

We have hired a full time employee this year. Mason just graduated from Hastings College in December and started full time with us on January 1st. He has worked part time for us the last year and we welcome him and are very happy to have him on board.

We have worked with Producers Hybrids as a dealer for the better part of two decades and they have worked really hard this year to make sure we have the tools necessary to succeed. To that end we took an extensive tour this year during the seed corn harvest and saw our products as they came out of the field and headed to the bags that we will deliver this spring for planting. Producers is a part of the Ag Reliant family and is independent in the fact that we are not owned by a chemical company which makes them a different kind of seed company.

Myself on the right with fellow dealer and friend Doug Luther in the middle and our District Sales Manager Jason Fryda. This was taken during lunch after visiting Ag Reliant’s Research facility on the southern side of Puerto Rico.

As part of equipping us with more knowledge of our company and our facilities, I am just returning from a visit with Producers to Puerto Rico where we toured our research facility there. They have the benefit of a climate which literally can allow three crop seasons in one year. They plant on most days and harvest on most days. This ability coupled with a dihaploid breeding process allows us to bring products to market faster than anyone in the industry. It was very beneficial to see what we have coming down the pipeline and have an opportunity to see the excitement that the people have for what is going on with our seed corn company.

The coming weeks will bring more prep work for the 2013 crop, my first meeting as a school board member at Adams Central, a meeting with the Dow Grower Technology Group, a vacation as a couple, and some basketball games the kids are playing in.

From our farm to yours, we all hope you had a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Did You Know McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Sonic All Support HSUS?

This is a great blog post by Chris Chinn, a farmer from Missouri.  Her number one concern is the welfare of her animals!

Did You Know McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Sonic All Support HSUS?.

Chris does a great job of explaining her family’s reasons for adopting modern pork production practices!!!

Raising “Food Animals”

Raising “Food Animals”

Animals hold many roles in our society. Growing up in urban South Florida, I had more experience with “pet animals” than any other. However, my dad likes to hunt so I was also familiar with wild animals that became food on my dinner table. When I married Matt, moved to Nebraska, and started to work at the cattle feed yard, I was exposed to another “type” of animal: a “food animal”. This is an animal that is raised for the express purpose of becoming human food.

It wasn’t until I began to work at the cattle feedyard that I starting thinking about animals in different “roles” in society. As an urbanite, the boundaries between the “animal types” were pretty fuzzy for me. Fifteen years later, as a cattle feedyard manager, the boundaries are very clearly defined. I have animals at my house that are pets. I have pet dogs, cats, and I even have a couple of horses that fall into the “pet” category.

Magnum (the horse) and Izmo (the cat in my daughter’s arms) are pets that are part of our family.
Those animals are literally part of our family. I suspect that many of you can empathize with this type of relationship with an animal.

My cattle do not fall into this category. They are not pets. They are animals that are raised for food production. I mentioned in my last post that I have two top priorities at the feedyard: food (beef) safety, and healthy and well cared for cattle. Those are priorities for me because I know that healthy cattle make healthy beef. It is a heady and sobering feeling for me as a mother to know that the animals that I am caring for will end up nourishing children. That is a huge responsibility, and one that I take very seriously. I have to have food (beef) safety as my top priority—the animals that I raise are being fed to people—they are not sleeping on my couch at night next to my dog.

This steer calf is a “food animal”, raised according to Beef Quality Assurance Practices, and will provide a safe and healthy source of beef for either my family or yours.
I make decisions every day that affect the health of my cattle and the safety of the beef that they produce. If I treated my animals “as pets” I would be doing a disservice to you as the consumer because food safety and quality would then not be my top priority. I realize that it may be difficult to imagine an animal that is not a pet, but I am asking you to do that because it is something that is incredibly important to understand if you are truly interested in “where you food comes from”. Your beef comes from cattle. If you have been following this blog from the inception, hopefully you fully realize how important cattle care and comfort are to me. However, it is equally important that you realize that, as a “grower of beef”, I must put the safety and quality of beef ahead of everything else.

About the author Anne Burkholder:

A native of urban Palm Beach County, Florida; I was an Ivy League educated athlete fueled by beef for many years before I understood “where my beef came from.” Now, I am a mother of three and live with my husband in Nebraska where we run a cattle feedyard and farming operation. Feed Yard Foodie is a site where people can come to read about the real story of beef, written by someone who actually gets their hands dirty.

Many thanks to Anne for allowing us to publish this piece on our blog. Please connect with her on her blog at www.feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com

Our Farm Week In Pictures 10-16-2011

Just a few pictures to catch you up with what we have going this time of year.  We are currently very busy with yellow corn harvest and have seen some very good yields.  We finished soybeans a few days ago.  The corn is still a little too wet to go to the elevator with it so we are putting it in bins to dry it down and store.

Also included is a short video of how I taught my black lab Coal to jump up to the combine platform to ride along.  I apologize for the video being sideways as I held my phone that way.   Tilt your head a little to the left and you will never notice!!!

This is a picture of our computer which logs yield, moisture, work rate, time, date, etc. while going though the field. We use this data along with soil maps, soil sampling, and previous years application data and yield data to make decisions regarding nutrient application and cropping plans for the next year.

This is a picture of the stover left over after harvesting a yellow corn field. The red parts are the cob that the kernels were on. The combine take the ear in, shells it, and spits everything else out of the rear of the machine. This stover becomes an organism in itself as it decays and provides nutrients for next years crop and helps control soil and water erosion in our no-till system.

This is a sunrise this week as we were preparing the combine for the day. I tried to catch the Hunters moon in the evening, but the iPhone camera would not do it justice.

My son and I taking a picture from the top of the combine while we were greasing it to get it ready for the day. It was a very brisk morning! I really enjoy the time he spends with me in the combine. The iPad has also made it a time when he can get a little learning in while riding along with me. We use apps such as Smarty Pants and a Phonics app.

Our Farm Week In Pictures 10-6-2011

We have been very busy around here.  Harvest is in full swing.  We will finish with soybeans by tomorrow and switch to corn.  The yields on the soybeans have been very good, but there are some larger varietal differences than I would like to see.  Sounds like a front moving in will bring rain by Friday evening and we will head to Lincoln Saturday to watch the Huskers play Ohio State.  We did get in a few days of goofing around before we got into harvest though.

Sailing with my Uncle Gary at Lake Hastings. The kids really enjoyed it and learned a lot about sailing.

Shooting pop cans with the bb gun a couple days before harvest started

My son and some of his buddies having a refreshment on the shop deck after an afternoon shooting pop cans with the bb gun. Shooting cans with 3 boys is a great chance to teach safety with firearms to prepare them for hunting season.

Area that the sprayer missed. What a mess.

Doing some welding on the flex head we use to harvest soybeans. It is an older head and requires quite a bit on maintenance and fixing during harvest

Our Farm Week in Pictures 9-8-2011

The last couple weeks we have been busy with State Fair, incorporating manure for next years corn crop, readying harvest equipment and making decisions for the 2012 crop year such as seed, fertilizer, cropping system, etc.

The new Nebraska State fair in Grand Island, NE continues to put Agriculture and its focus as active environmentalists, not environmental activists front and center as it should be.

These are the moisture sensors we place in the fields to measure saturation of the soil and schedule irrigation. This is the second year we have used these and I believe it is saving us two to three irrigation passes per year with the pivot which equates to savings of 500 gallons of diesel, 145 hours of operation on the motor, and 22.68 million gallons of water.

These are the moisture sensors when they are out of the ground. We put them at one, two and three foot depths to guage the water saturation of the soil.

This is a fertilizer map on the computer. As you can see, we vary the rate of fertilizer based on soil type, soil sample, yield potential based on historical data, and type of crop. This is just another way we have continued to build efficiency into our operation over the years with technology. We have been collecting data by GPS now for 10 years and variable rate applying fertilizer and seed for 6-7 years.

Farm Week In Pictures 7/7/2011

THis is

A picture on the ladder of the combine

This is a picture of our kids and Kristi’s brother’s son as he got to explore the farm yesterday. They live in the city and this was his first chance to come to the farm for a tractor ride, explore the combine, and take a ride in the Rangers

Ranger Rides

Taking a ride in the ranger on our farm

Corn growing quickly here.

The corn is growing quickly here and has hidden the pivot tires from view. We are around 10 days away from tasseling. The sweetcorn we planted tasseled a few days ago here.

Soybeans

Soybeans almost canopying the row. These soybeans are planted in 30 inch rows.

Our Farm Week in Pictures

This is a picture of my son out in one of our earliest planted fields last week.  The pivot irrigation system is in the background.

This corn is just beginning to canopy the row which will help conserve moisture and control weeds access to sunlight.

Cleaning up the planter to put it away for the season.  We try to store most high dollar equipment in the buildings to reduce wear on them.  Who needs a Ferrari when you have $130,000 planter you use one month a year, or a $$300,000 combine you use the same amount of time?  Production agriculture is a very capital intensive business.

Growing Your Own Food

Sometimes I think Farmers get a bad rap and are accused of being

against the whole locavore, grow your own food movement.  I personally do not think anything could be further from the truth.  Fact is that Farmers like to grow

things.  I know, ironic isn’t it, a farmer likes to get down and plant things in the dirt, nurture it, and then eat it.

We have had a garden as long as I can remember and will always continue to do so.  I remember as a kid helping plant the garden and eventually, it became my little farm as I grew up.   I have always loved having fresh vegetable to eat, I just wish there w

as a way to grow them in the winter when the wind chill is -20.  See, I am a whateverisavailablethatisgoodforyouavore.  I grow the garden in the summer and my wife sometimes goes to the local farmers market, then in the winter I rely on the southern and western US to grow the vegetables and fruits that we enjoy during that time of year.

So, since we are talking about gardening and growing your own food, what have you done this year to grow your own food?  In our garden this year we have 4 varieties of tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, green beans, yellow waxy beans, asparagus, broccoli, pickling cucumbers, burpless cucumbers, acorn squash, butternut squash, butttercup squash, zucchini, yellow zucchini, gourds, pumpkins, and some sweetcorn.  Let us know what you have growing and why you grow it.  What do you do in the months you don’t have fresh vegetables and fruit to pick?  By all means, during theses months that the farmers market are open, go for it and go local.  In the middle of winter, let’s be thankful we are blessed with a phenomenal agricultural and transpor

tation system that allows us to enjoy all of these things year round no matter where we are located.   Count our blessing that we are a country that can feed itself and feed itself well.

Our Farm in Pictures 6-3-2011

Here is a few photos showing the progress of our crops this week.  The one crop I did not include is the alfalfa which is ready for the first cutting to be put down.

The last picture is of our electrical controls at our bin site that were blown down in the wind a few nights ago.  We were lucky as the storm weakened by the time it hit us.  There were pivot irrigation systems and bins destroyed by the same storm to the north, south, and west of us.