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.

Early Winter...

What wonderful weather we've had since harvest concluded. While still on the dry side, we have had several consecutive weeks in a row for outside activities such as dirt work pictured below, tile projects, tree trimming and hauling grain out of our bins. The month of December has flown by and everyone is looking forward to spending time with their families over the holiday season. Despite COVID and social distancing, 2020 will go into the books as one of our more successful years in this business. We were blessed with good yields, increasing prices towards the end of harvest, and our continued health. We want to thank all that help us with our business this past year and wish everyone a safe and profitable 2021. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Brent

Removing terraces on our farm outside Ashland.

Tom standing beside the tile trencher while it waits to start laying another run of tile. 

 

Harvest ends...

Harvest 2020 was over for us on Monday, November 2nd. As quickly as it started, it was over. This year it took just over seven weeks of work to put away our crop. The weather was about as good as one could order it with just two days off for rains and a few other Sunday's off for folks to spend time with family. Yields were variable, but pleasantly surprising overall. Areas that received even an additional two tenths of rainfall in August were the big winners. We have moved on from harvesting to tillage and fertilizer activities. Our area remains very dry and many are commenting that this has an eerie feeling to the fall of 2011 which was followed by the drought of 2012. Who knows, but time will tell. Thank you to all our employees and service providers for helping us get through harvest safely and efficiently!

Harvest 2020 begins...

We started our 2020 harvest last Wednesday, September 16th - the exact same date we began last year. Corn moisture's were high when we started, but have finally dropped into the 18-21% range as of today. We have even harvested a few of our nonGMO soybean fields that were planted the first week of April. Yields have been good on corn, but below our last several years production. Despite zero rain in August, soybeans have been a nice surprise, but they also haven't exceeded any records either. We had a good run of 11 days straight of harvesting. Last night's half inch rains were welcomed for us to get caught back up on office work, maintenance and gather our plans for the next run of harvest. Be safe!

Harvesting corn on the Grand Prairie Farm.

Dumping a load of corn at our dryer site.

First pass of soybeans this fall on the Dunlap Young farm.