Week ending April 23rd...

Rain, rain, and more rain was the theme of the week. It has rained "inches" this week since Monday evening. We were able to sneak in one day of planting on Monday west of Jacksonville on our Chapin farms where they apparently missed the majority of last weekend's rains. We planted with both planters until the rains rolled in late in the evening and wrapped up field work for the week. Thanks to Mark Staake for allowing us to park our equipment at his farm while we are on this rain delay. With Monday's contribution, we are now ~45% planted. The first three days of our 2011 corn planting have accumulated enough Growing Degree Units (GDU's) to emerge despite the rain and recent cold weather. Our corn planted a week ago has a nice 1/4" sprout. We normally do not like to plant corn ahead of a cold rain, but with the forecast calling for weeks worth of rains we went ahead and planted every hour we could. It appears that the next time we will be able to get back in the fields to plant will be May...

Happy Easter from all of us at Johnson Family Farms!

David working ground at Chapin

Bob planting the first field at Chapin and David with the Quadtrac in the distance

Newly emerged corn on our first planted field of 2011