Saturday, March 7th...

The weather has turned warmer and the shop has been busy with activity. We are getting equipment ready for spring as well as working on outside projects when the weather allows. With the recent windy days and sunshine the soil is drying out nicely. Some of our neighbors are working ground and Uncle Bob has started putting on anhydrous ammonia on his last field. Planting season will be here shortly!

Tom replacing bogey wheels on a tracked tractor while the farm dogs "supervise..."

One of the planters is ready to roll!

Brad replacing bogey wheels on the Case IH 470 RowTrac tractor.

Bob putting new brushes in the Kinze soybean planter meters.

Trimming tree limbs that overhang the field on the Lehmann farm.

Saturday, January 11th...

It is hard to believe that 2019 is already gone and we are almost two weeks into 2020. The winter weather for us has been extremely mild and at some times downright warm for December/January. We have been busy working outside cleaning up equipment, trimming tree lines in the field borders and hauling grain out of our local bins to river or rail terminals. We even snuck a few days of "spring" tillage in between Christmas and New Years as the ground in our area has been dry up until last night's 2.5" of rainfall. Overall, we were extremely blessed with the results of the 2019 crop despite the turmoil it caused a lot of other farmers throughout Illinois and the US. We hope 2020 brings the end of tariff wars with our largest trading partners throughout the world and starts to begin some stability in the world grain markets. Here is to hoping you and your family have a great 2020!

A load of corn coming out of the bin headed for nearby Bartlett Grain Company in Jacksonville where it will be loaded on a 110 unit train and shipped to cattle lots in Mexico. 

Trimming trees along a field border - a common thing we tackle every year after harvest. 

Leveling ground between Christmas and New Years that will be planted back to corn. We call this "stale seedbed" and will not be running anymore equipment over this field until the planter in the spring. These opportunities are rare to get a weather window like this to work ground down in December. 

Emptying a small bin of soybeans.

Another semi load of soybeans heading for the Illinois River where it will be put on a barge and shipped down to New Orleans for export to somewhere in the world. 

Thanksgiving

We have again been very fortunate to get a lot of our fall fieldwork accomplished. Below are pictures of our last day of anhydrous ammonia application. We now have all our fall fertilizer applied as well as primary Nitrogen source for next year's corn crop. Last year we did not even start anhydrous applications until the day after Christmas and even then we only got 160 acres applied before it got too wet. It feels good to be caught up compared to last year. We have finalized our 2020 cropping plans unless the markets over the winter tell us they want more corn acres. We've selected the corn hybrids we will be planting next year and are still ironing out the details on what brand and variety of soybeans we will plant next year. Harvest equipment has been mostly washed and put away and we are gearing up to haul many semi loads of corn from our grain bins to the rail terminal in nearby Jacksonville during the month of December. We also plan to haul some of our nonGMO soybeans over to Archer Daniels Midland Co. in Decatur in December. As you can tell, we have many blessings this Thanksgiving to be thankful for. From all of us at Johnson Family Farms, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

Harvest is complete...!!!

Harvest began on Monday, September 16th and we wrapped it up on Tuesday, October 29th ahead of an 1.5" of rain and later 2-3" of snow. What a year 2019 has been! And we certainly know how lucky we are to have harvest complete compared to those in Northern Illinois, Dakotas and everywhere else it is super wet. Yields were surprisingly good in corn and average to good on soybeans. We did dry a lot our corn out of the field compared to past years, but that is also why we geared up and added the bigger dryer for this fall in anticipation of that. We have plenty of tillage and fertilizer applications to get wrapped up, but recent rain and snow fall has totaled up to 4" on some of our farms so it will be awhile before tillage can be completed. We are currently working on catching up on book work in the office and starting to make plans for our 2020 crop. 

We would again like to thank all of our employees for the long hours and continuous days they put in bringing in our 2019 harvest. We would also like to thank our partners in the field such as Beard Implement, Central Illinois Trucks, and Prairieland FS for such great service again this fall. 

Combining soybeans with the City of Ashland as the backdrop.

The clouds finally parted at the end of the day which made for an amazing sunset looking to our West from Ashland as we topped off a grain bin.

Harvesting corn right outside the city limits of Ashland.

Hammering out the soybeans on our farms in Greenfield.

We witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets while harvesting corn on our Elkhart farm. The sky looked like it was on fire. 

Aerial shot of the combine and all the grain it collects before dumping in the grain cart.

Transferring corn from the grain cart to the semis.

Harvesting corn on the last field near New Berlin.

Harvest continues...

Harvest continues to roll on. Compared to our friends in Northern Illinois we have been very fortunate to have such mild weather and few rain days. We know how blessed we are this fall with good weather, good yields and a fantastic harvest and tillage crew. We are making good progress on both the harvest and tillage side of the business. We have all the soybeans harvested locally as well as Greene County. We have 295 acres of beans left on the Williamsville farm and hope to get those harvested this upcoming week. There is still plenty of corn to be combined, but typically the weather in late October and November is more conducive for corn harvest than soybean harvest. We've had our share of breakdowns and we'd like to give a BIG THANKS to the folks at BEARD IMPLEMENT in nearby Ashland for getting us going as soon as they could. Their service is phenomenal! 

Another benefit to having a grain dryer is having the ability to get fields tiled in early fall. This was a project that we were not planning to do this fall, but given this was our first field harvested the tile guys jumped on the opportunity to tile when it was 90 degrees out versus 30...

Refilling the combines with Diesel Exhaust Fluid.

We decided to add another grain bin at our grain center late in the spring. The crew from Automated Ag in LeRoy, IL was exactly on time with there estimate of when they thought they would get it built - first week of October. We are excited to have this added to our facility on time to be able to utilize this fall. 

Harvest has begun...

Harvest began on Monday, September 16th at Johnson Family Farms. We have focused on corn harvest for the last two weeks, but recently we switched to harvesting soybeans. Yields in both crops have been a pleasant surprise and we feel extremely blessed given the year. We also are blessed to have a wonderful and hard working group helping us this fall on harvest and tillage operations. 

Recently three plus inches of rain have given us some time off, but we are staying busy transferring out dry corn from our grain center and working on various other projects.

The CaseIH combine eats 30' of corn every pass. We grow corn in 20 inch rows so our corn head takes 18 rows at a time. 

The grain cart shuttles corn from the combine to trucks along the road. This keeps the combine at peak efficiency and allows us to cover more acres per day.

The sun sets in the background as a truck waits to be unloaded.

A top down view of our new continuous flow grain dryer.

Trucks in line waiting to be unloaded at our grain center.

Transferring out dry corn to satellite bins.

One of the youngest barns in Morgan County on our Strawns Crossing farm.

Spreading limestone on the corn stalks at the Grand Prairie Farm.

Pre-Harvest...

Harvest is quickly approaching. We are finishing up summer projects and getting equipment and bins ready for harvest. While the recent weeks have been cool and overcast, our April planted corn is beginning to mature. We expect to have some harvest activity on the farm by the first part of next week. 

Trenching in a new and larger gas line from our Lp tank to the new grain dryer

Adding a little more rock around the shop and also to Grandma's driveway

Staging lime to be spread this fall after fields have been harvested

Baling waterways on the Dunlap Young farm