Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We started harvest on the evening of September 6th and finished on Tuesday, November 9th. We had a great run and were well ahead of our typical progress until rains shut us out for virtually half of October. All in all it was a great harvest with soybean yields setting a new farm record and corn coming in around 10-15 bushels per acre under our three year average. Too much rain in July for the corn and too much disease in August which brought the corn to an early death. In fact, about 150 acres of our last two corn fields up North were flat in places or severely lodged. We had to switch back to our 20' 12 row 20" corn head with the reel all the way across it to harvest much of those 150 acres. We also made the decision to put the tracks back on the main combine as when harvest resumed after the October rains it was fairly wet and we knew we would have several places in specific fields that tracks would be warranted and help ensure we wouldn't get stuck. 

Since harvest wrapped up, we have been completing field activities such as fertilizer spreading, lime and gypsum spreading as well as deep tillage. We were also very fortunate to have a 10 day window to get all our anhydrous ammonia applied for next year's corn crop. We locked in our ammonia price back in August and were worried if we would get it applied. Today's price is almost double what we paid due to demand and lack of production. If we didn't get it applied this fall, our contracts were null and void and would revert back to current market prices. Getting it applied versus what we believe will happen come spring was worth $73 per acre. Crazy!

While several are doing tillage and fertilizer work in the fields, we are also washing, servicing and putting equipment away for winter. We like to take our time and service all the equipment for the next season so that when we get it out of the shed it is "field ready" and doesn't require much time to go through prior to it's next use. 

We have much to be thankful for again this year. Specifically, family, friends, our health, good markets, good yields, wonderful employees and our freedoms. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Johnson Family Farms!

Harvesting soybeans at Williamsville.

The last time we took the bean heads off the combines - done with soybean harvest!

20' corn head with the reel on it for downed corn as well as the tracks to combat the mud.

This year we made the decision to plant cover crop wheat in several sensitive areas where water runs during the winter and spring to slow down the erosion and help keep the soil in place. This is a picture of our 15' no-till drill we purchased to seed the cover crop wheat. 

Deep ripping. We just got this tillage tool in the field as it had been too wet to operate it effectively. Now that it is dry, we are running it on end rows and fields that will be planted to corn next year. This tillage tool helps break up the compaction and lets the corn roots grow deep into our rich prairie soils. 

Harvest 21 rolls on...

We are making good progress on our 2021 harvest. The weather has been wonderful with little to no rain days. Soybean yields are surprisingly good, while corn is under last year's results, but still very consistent. Here are a few photos since my last post. - Brent

Harvesting soybeans in Greenfield. 

Filling grain bins with the grain cart and wagons since we were harvesting so close to the bins. 

A beautiful harvest sunset.

Dumping nonGMO soybeans out of a truck and into a grain bin for storage.

Spraying nitrogen and molasses to feed the microbes to help break down corn stalks that will be corn again next year.

Harvest has begun...

4th of July...

Time sure does fly by as I realized it had been awhile since I last posted any activity. I can assure you that things have been busy here at Johnson Family Farms since we wrapped up our planting and replanting activities. We have all the herbicide sprayings completed on the crops, but are starting to turn our focus towards applying fungicides on our soybeans & corn. We received anywhere from 6-10" of rainfall across our farms in the last couple weeks - most of which was needed. We were lucky to have all our roadsides mowed up and looking good prior to all that rain. While waiting for things to dry up we have been busy on shop projects with semis and trailers. Our latest project was converting our 1969 tanker trailer over from Dayton rims to hub and pilot. The Dayton rims had the wedge kit to keep the rim/wheel in place and were extremely difficult to reposition correctly. Most tire repair places will not work on them anymore. This project involved removing the old wheel hubs and replacing with matching hubs. That was a challenge matching 2021 hubs with a 1969 manufactured trailer. But after a couple different trips for parts, the guys got everything converted over and we now sport shiny new aluminum rims on an older stainless steel tanker. The crops are progressing quite well and we should begin fungicide applications on corn with the airplane this week. Soon the first planted sweetcorn will be ready as well. We hope everyone had a good 4th of July holiday!Brent

Loading soybeans headed to the Illinois River to be exported.

Our 4th of July display.

Our corn planted April 7th is now fully tasseled.

Planting begins....

Planting season has begun here at Johnson Family Farms! We were blessed with extremely good planting conditions and weather to start the 2021 planting season. We had the opportunity to plant six days while taking Easter Sunday off to enjoy with family. It is now raining here and much cooler, but we are optimistic that what we have already planted will handle these cooler and wetter conditions and emerge just fine. There was quite a bit of fieldwork and planting activity in our local area of Central Illinois the last week and many neighbors have made great progress on their 2021 crop plantings. Given the current forecast, it may be a little while before we are back in the fields. Be safe out there and please be patient with all the large farm equipment traveling the roads this spring!

Loading the first boxes of nonGMO soybeans into the planter for the year - Grand Prairie farm.

Refilling the planter with fertilizer in Greenfield.

Crossing Cemetery Road West of Ashland with 15" dual wall plastic tile to tie in the neighbors' tile to our newly finished drainage project on the Whisnat field.

Spring 1981

Spring 1976

March 18th...

Spring planting preparations are ongoing. We are also working on getting the last of the March grain contracts delivered. We finally received a nice three inch rain which we expect will get our field tile flowing once again. It has been since last July since the field tile ran. We were really dry. Very thankful for that. 

Loading nonGMO beans from the bin into semis

The nonGMO soybeans going from the pit at Cargill at Naples all the way out on the belt and direct into a 60,000 bushel barge on the Illinois River.

Trying something new this year...chicken litter in place of commercial synthetic fertilizer. It's much more expensive due to the freight from St. Louis, but we are going to try it on a couple farms for several years to gauge it's effectiveness.

February 6th...

Tile, tile and more tile seems to be what we've been up to on the farm lately. It has been an exceptional winter to install tile due to the dry ground conditions and milder weather. We have completed several projects and are set to begin another major project outside of Ashland on our "Whisnat Farm." On this project we will be installing 15" tile to not only help drain our excess water, but also collect the water "above" our fields from the neighbors to our North and get all that water collectively under ground and not running on top of the waterway. 

We have also been moving grain from our bins to end users in Decatur, the Illinois River in Beardstown and also the rail shuttle in nearby Jacksonville that ships corn into Mexico. When the weather has been nasty or all the grain deliveries have been completed for the month the guys have been working on projects in the shop. They completely rebuilt the hitch on our John Deere roadside and waterway mower as well as went through it and made sure it was ready to be used this summer. They also made a rear end seal repair to the Farmall 35hp utility tractor as well as putting the finishing touches on our new mobile fertilizer pump stand. We've also taken delivery of quite a bit of the seed corn we will be planting in just a few short months. 

We have been blessed with a few inches of recent rainfall and now extreme cold temperatures are on the way. Those two combined together should give Mother Nature a nice recipe to freeze and thaw the soil in the fields which typically provides us a beautiful seed bed similar to a garden come spring.  

Installing 40 acres of tile on the wettest portion of our Williamsville farm.

Laying out 15" Dual Wall Plastic pipe for our next tile project.

Down to the sweep auger in one of our corn bins.