Week ending June 22nd...

Since my last post the weather has turned sunny and warm.  The crops have taken advantage of the great weather and are growing rapidly.  We have wrapped up spotting in the wet holes on our corn fields and continue to work on the thin spots in our soybean fields.  Ironically, our area has turned dry and we would like to see a rain; especially on our Jacksonville farm and farms further South.  We continue to wash spring machinery and put away equipment.  The sprayer is now focused on the last herbicide applications on the soybeans.  We also have been mowing roadsides and spraying weeds in the fence rows and road banks.  Summer is going quickly and all those yellow school buses will be here before you know it.  

Planting soybeans on the Atwood Farm 

 Side-dressing 28% Nitrogen on the Daubard 80

The soybeans are getting big on the Elkhart 160 

Automated Ag unloading our new air system and wet bin 

No more down spouts - we ditched them under ground

The boys having fun at the Sangamon County Fair this week

Planting Update...

What a busy week!  On Monday we traveled to the John Deere Harvester Works in Moline, IL to view our new combine being built.  It was amazing to see all the details that go into manufacturing today's combines.  On Tuesday afternoon, we were able to get back in the fields and work on completing our soybean plantings.  We were fortunate to have Dan Brucker bring his planter and tractor down from the Bloomington area to help us cover more acres.  With his planter and our two planters, we managed to get all our soybean acres covered within a week.  A big thank you goes out to Dan for helping us.  We also finally wrapped up our corn on Saturday outside Jacksonville.  Is it bad to say we could use a rain on those fields to give the corn a good stand when we've experienced excessive rains all spring???  

We are now working on spraying herbicides and mowing roadsides.  Spotting in drowned out spots and washing up spring planting machinery are also some of the activities we are focused on.  What a spring - comparatively, we finished planting our 2013 corn crop 57 days later than we did our 2012 corn.  Unfortunately, that means our harvest this season will be pushed back into November and possibly even December.  Let's just hope our yield results will be significantly better than last year's as well.

Tom starting his new combine for the very first time on the John Deere Factory assembly line 

Much of the painting at Deere & Company is still done by hand 

Bob working ground on the Atwood farm across the road from our shop 

David replanting a wet hole in a corn field along Rt. 123

Tom spraying herbicides on corn outside of Ashland

Tom out with the disk on the Arnold Farm fixing wash outs from all the recent rains 

 Dan Brucker & Ron Brown loading the planter with more soybeans at the Arnold Farm outside Jacksonville

Dan Brucker making the final pass on a field outside Jacksonville 

Planting on our new County Line Farm South of Nortonville

Saturday, June 1st...

More rain this week with large amounts.  We will be taking preventative planting on the majority of our remaining corn acres.  This is the first time ever we have used preventative planting on corn; unheard of in Central Illinois.  We have over half our soybeans to plant, but there is still time to get those planted with good yield potential.  Our corn fields that have emerged have huge ponds of water sitting on them which will kill the young corn plants underneath the water's surface.  Even our best stands of corn took heavy amounts of rain last night.  Mother Nature is making a wicked average from last year...

Rail cars at the Scoular @ Waverly facility blown over from 70 mph straight line winds Thursday evening