Happy New Year!

We would like to wish you a Happy New Year from Johnson Family Farms! We wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2010!

Merry Christmas!

Working outside...

Newly discovered tile @ the Williamsville farm

Where the "bridge" used to be...

Looking West towards Dan Gieseke & the trackhoe

Dan at work trimming the ditch bank

"Brent's" next project...

Our work continues as we try to wrap up 2009. We have been busy washing and putting away more of the harvest equipment as well as meeting with accountants and getting the remainder of our 2009 finances in order. As well, Sunrise FS has been spreading fertilizer on the Foster farms around Ashland.

Bedolli Excavating has wrapped up the ditch-cleaning project on the Williamsville farm. The ditch will now be able to handle almost double the amount of water it did previously. Not to mention that they discovered eight new tile lines that were plugged with dirt right at the bank that we now have running; nice surprise! They also removed two huge pieces of concrete buried in the ditch bank that appears to have been part of a bridge structure at one time. I also got an opportunity to learn what a "Missouri crossing" was for the first time...

More to do...

Dan Gieseke operating the track hoe.

The new ditch bank vs. the old one.

Notice the color difference of the grass on the ditch bank.
The water level has dropped at least 2' since the start of the project.

While we finished harvest last Tuesday morning, we have stayed busy performing maintenance on the fall machinery and various other jobs. We even started the harvest crew back up and went to work helping a friend wrap up their harvest. Yesterday we finished the final 30 acres remaining for our neighbor and today we will move the machinery home we hope for the last time this season.

To-date the ground has remained too frozen to chisel plow. We are still hopeful that we can get in and till the remaining 230 acres around Ashland which we intend to grow corn on corn on.

Bedolli Excavating has arrived at the Williamsville farm to begin our ditch cleaning project. This project is a partnership with the adjoining land owner to widen and deepen 1.5 miles of drainage ditch. As you can see from the pictures, the work they have already completed has lowered the water level by a couple feet.

Harvest 2009 is Over...

Adjusting the downed corn reel on a very cold morning...

The remaining corn at the Williamsville farm was all as flat as the corn in this picture...

Unloading on-the-go...notice how dirty the corn was.

Just as the rain and winds arrived late yesterday morning we finally wrapped up our 2009 harvest. A big thank you goes out to all of our employees and family for all your dedication, hard work and patience this harvest season!

We were fortunate to get all the machinery and trucks moved back home to Ashland and parked indoors before the temperatures dropped and the rain changed over to ice and snow. It is a good feeling to wrap up harvest, but we still have tillage that we would like to do if given the chance.

Thank you again to everyone who helped us this fall; whether it be driving a truck, running a grain cart, or delivering meals to the fields to feed our hungry crew - your help was truly appreciated!

The Holiday Season...

Harvesting the last of the "standing" corn at Williamsville today

In celebration of all of the 'standing' corn being out of the fields, we have added a little holiday music to the blog! We hope you enjoy!

Harvest progress...

Harvest sunset in Greene County

Dumping corn at HOG, Inc.

Carl chiseling on the Mears Land Trust

Harvesting on the 20a. field

Line of over 60 trucks waiting to dump Monday evening at Johnson Grain in Waverly

After celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with family we were able to get back in the fields and resume harvesting. We completed half of the Martin Farm and then moved down to our farms in Greene County. With light weekend traffic at HOG, Inc. we were able to get in and out of the elevator in good time and keep the combine moving. The tile we installed earlier this spring proved to pay great dividends. The yields were good considering it was planted on June 1st with the tile installed a mere four weeks earlier. Overall, we were pleasantly surprised with yields on our Greene county farms. We finished down south Monday afternoon and moved back to the Martin farm. This afternoon we completed that acreage and made another move to our remaining corn around Ashland. At this point we have ~70 acres of standing corn left to harvest. Unfortunately, it is all in the wettest parts of fields and we will most likely have to wait for this week's cold weather to freeze the ground before we can harvest it. Outside of the corn around Ashland, we have a few acres of tornado corn we would like to harvest before calling it a year.

Tomorrow we will harvest what corn we can around the wet holes and bring the chisel plow home from Greenfield to begin work on the U of I farm.

Hope we miss the rains and snow tomorrow...