Friday, March 4th...

We had an extremely rare stretch of warm winter weather that has allowed our soils to dry out from the winter and gave us an opportunity to get our final anhydrous ammonia applied. This past fall we seeded a few fields with a cereal rye cover crop and on those fields we waited until now to apply the nitrogen. We also waited to apply our South farm with spring nitrogen. Typically, we get all our ammonia applied in the fall, but with the current agricultural recession we are experiencing, we decided to wait and let the markets tell us which crop would be more profitable to plant. According to our budgets, corn is still king and thus we switched a few more acres away from soybeans. Now that our preplant nitrogen is complete we will shift our focus towards spring activities and soon corn planting season. 

Applying Anhydrous Ammonia Nitrogen fertilizer in 20" strips on a field that was planted to cereal rye in the late fall. Now that the Nitrogen has been applied, we will kill off the rye cover crop as soon as it begins to green up and come back to life. 

Taking another load of seed corn in preparation for our 2016 corn crop.

Sunday, February 7th...

Time has flown since my last blog post. It seems as though meetings have consumed most of our time since the beginning of the year. Work continues in the shop on winter projects and will soon transition toward spring planting equipment. We have already taken delivery of some of our seed corn and will continue to as the days get closer to planting. Recent meetings have taken us up to Chicago to attend the annual Top Producer Seminar. During this seminar we listen to top notch speakers from topics ranging from the commodity markets, weather, branding our business, to new interpretive data programs that analyze our farms yield, soil, and fertility information. The main weather presenter predicted that the El Nino weather pattern will turn sometime this summer and switch our weather to a La Nina. La Nina summers for our area tend to be hot and dry while winters historically are very cold with lots of snow. Time will tell if that will truly be the case.

Moving a little corn from one of our on farm bins.

Completing repairs on one of our semi's.  New air bags, inside tires repainted and also a fresh coat of paint on the frame.

A new entrance along Highway 125 outside Ashland we worked with the State of Illinois Department of Transportation to get installed.  They also removed two old 12' wide concrete culverts that were installed many years ago and have since filled in over time.

A New Year...

The calendar has finally turned over to 2016 and a new production year is ahead of us. This year looks to be challenging with lower commodity prices and input costs that remain stubbornly higher and more suited for a $4.50 to $5 corn market. We are constantly evaluating our production methods and looking for ways to cut costs. This is a challenge because we want to cut costs, but not limit our bushels of production. Every year we test different "Add-on" products to our existing production methods. Now it is time to evaluate those that worked against $3.50 corn and $8.75 soybeans to see if they return 2:1. If they don't they are scratched from our 2016 crop plan. 

Over the holidays we experienced the largest rainfall I can ever remember for the month of December. We received 6" of rain over three days and felt very lucky as areas to our East and South received upwards of 11 to 13" of rain. Ponds in fields were everywhere. However, it was reassuring to see our fields that are pattern-tiled had little to no ponding within three days after the rainfall. We are now at full field moisture capacity as we start the new year and snow and the coldest temperatures of the year are knocking at our door.

We wish everyone a safe, productive, and financially strong 2016!

Hauling more corn from our bins to the rail terminal in Lowder.

 

Building our new shop - Spring of 1979.
I posted these pictures because by 1979 's standards, this was a very large heated shop and shed being built.  However, now that machinery has grown in size & scope we find ourselves cramped for space in the winter months as temperatures drop as they will this upcoming week.  If only we could build something now in a similar scope for those 1979 dollars...!

Drilling the well for the new shop.

Sunday, December 13th...

What a stretch of crazy good weather we've experienced this fall and early winter! It has allowed us to get more outside projects completed than we ever thought. As the calendar rolled into December we began hauling corn from our bins to the rail terminal in nearby Jacksonville. We've also shipped a few bushels of soybeans. As the soils have dried, that has allowed us to fix more tile holes and do more work outside. Marketing meetings along with end of year tax appointments have also consumed a lot of our time. We have a few more meetings to attend and things will transition toward a little time off to focus on family and the Christmas holiday. 

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Installing new tile outlets on our Williamsville farm

Loading soybeans into the grain cart from our grain bins while we wait for a semi truck to return from the elevator

Saturday, November 21st...

As I write this post the first snow fall of the year has arrived. The weather has changed as things are quickly turning towards winter. Since my last post we have cleaned up and put away the fall harvest and tillage machinery and applied all the anhydrous ammonia we wanted to get on. We have also worked on trimming a few trees, fixing tile holes, and performing various other odd jobs. Year end book work, 2016 seed selection, and a few meetings will consume a lot of our time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We are also catching up on family time and attending the slew of youth basketball games that are scheduled for this winter. The Fighting Illini have made Springfield there new home for basketball while the State Farm Center is being renovated and we try to attend as many of those games as possible with the boys.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are thankful for those that continue to support and promote our business - we couldn't do it without you.

Refueling the 20" strip-till bar

Putting on anhydrous ammonia on the Williamsville farm

Fixing tile holes on the Arnold 30 outside Jacksonville

Sean up in the loader bucket trimming trees in Greenfield

Replacing a corner post on the Mears Land Trust in Greenfield

Wednesday, October 28th...

Harvest 2015 ended for us a week ago as we wrapped up the last of our corn in Greenfield. As I have mentioned in previous posts, this harvest was much different from last year's. This year it lasted seven weeks and virtually only had one day we had to stop for rain. Versus last year that was 71 days from start to finish with about a third of those being rain outs. Corn yields this year were down 15-20% and soybean yields up 8-10%. We continue to remain very dry, although the last two days have consisted of light rain. Since finishing harvest we have been busy seeding cover crops on a few select fields, cleaning harvest machinery, trimming trees, and other various odd jobs in preparation for winter. We have also been getting the anhydrous ammonia applicators ready to go for when the soils cool down. Catching up on office work, fertilizer plans, and preparing our 2016 cropping plans have also been on the list of activities. It's great to be done ahead of the time change this year!

Harvesting the last field of soybeans in Nortonville.

Planting cover crops outside Ashland.

Tire threw a rock into the back windshield of one of our semis. End result was a shattered window that fell out during pit stop for fuel. Sean Mears, one of our employees making light of the situation.

Sunday, October 11th...

What a difference a year makes! Last year we battled mud and cold temperatures most all of harvest. This year it is dry and warm. We are actually very dry. So dry that most all of us will need subsequent rains before we begin anhydrous ammonia applications. Harvest is moving along nicely. We have 200 acres of corn to harvest around Pleasant Plains and then we will move to our Greenfield farm. We have one last field of soybeans to harvest, but believe it or not they aren't quite ready yet due to them being a 4.2 maturity and planted on June 10th. Corn yields have stayed towards the higher end of the "good" category; despite only being 13-15% moisture coming right out of the field. In fact, we only ran our corn dryer for two weeks of our entire harvest. That is very rare. Soybean yields have been nothing short of exciting with only a few fields disappointing; but only by this year's standards. Bean yields across Central Illinois seem to be exceptional everywhere. We are caught up on our tillage operations. The weather this fall has allowed for good tillage conditions and also plenty of time to get fields limed to get the pH's corrected. We are working on plans to plant some rye cover crop ahead of corn on a few fields and hopefully next time I update the blog I'll have pictures of us seeding that. With any luck we will be done with harvest within the next 10 days. 

Another semi load of corn getting ready to leave the Elkhart farm at dusk.

Ronnie Brown running the chisel plow.

Two 40' draper heads can cover a lot of soybean acres in a hurry...

Harvesting soybeans on the Quad J field South of Prentice along Rt. 123.

Ron getting all the waterways and creek banks looking good on the Williamsville farm.

Keeping the trucks moving.

Harvesting corn on the Grand Prairie Farm.

Aerial shot with the drone of the chisel plow working at Elkhart. He is literally pulling in the field the same day the combine finishes.