Week ending Sunday, May 18th...

Since my last post we have been busying planting soybeans. In just five days we planted 90% of our soybeans across three counties. This was the first year we were able to run both planters at the same time since we already had the corn planted.  We began by planting the nonGMO soybeans with the 20" planter and the GMO beans with the 15" planter. In a couple days we had the nonGMO soybeans planted and switched back to our usual RoundUp Ready soybeans. The first planted soybeans can easily be rowed from the highway and the most recently planted are just now pushing out of the ground. We lack planting our acreage in Greenfield which we chose not to plant ahead of the 3-4" rain forecast. Turns out they had significantly more rain down there and it looks like a good decision not to have those planted. We did have a field of corn on lighter soils that struggled to emerge and took a combination of good rains, sunshine, and heat units to get it out of the ground. It isn't a perfect stand, but with it being May 18th and having a flex-ear hybrid we are going to leave it and see what happens - it should turn out fine for that particular environment. On a more positive note, all our other corn fields had excellent emergence with very low seedling mortality rates and extremely even stands. Stands like this give us the potential to have tremendous yields if Mother Nature cooperates. Recently the nighttime temperatures have dropped into the high 30's and many are concerned the lower lying areas of corn and bean fields could have experienced frost and killed some of the plants. We are going out tomorrow morning to access the damage, if any. We like to give the corn and beans a day or two of sunshine and warmer weather before making a decision to start over or leave it. While we planted our soybeans we also started spraying corn with our post emerge herbicide pass. Finishing our corn spraying will be a priority this week while we wait on the ground to dry in Greenfield to finish planting.  

Our corn planted on April 10th is now V4 and growing quickly.  The recent cool temperatures have slowed it down, but in two weeks it will be closing the rows.

A grounds eye view of the 20" planter

Planting on our County Line Farm near Nortonville

Planting the last of the corn on the Arnold farm near Jacksonville.

Newly planted corn where trees stood just a month ago.  We cleared two small groves of trees on our County Line Farm near Nortonville this spring which allow us to farm straight through versus snaking around the timber.

David unloading soybean seed