As summer eases into early fall, it’s a good time to share what has been going on here at the farm over the last few months. When this growing season started, the seeds we planted went into soil that was a little drier than we liked. We didn’t know that would be a theme for much of this summer.
Our planting season went well. All of our seeds went into the ground on time and there was still some moisture in the ground for the crops to get a start. We had an excellent first cutting of alfalfa and then things changed. What moisture was in the ground was used by the plants to establish themselves and then no rain came and it got very dry. With no rain through May we were quite concerned about our crops, especially our new seeding alfalfa.
I was starting to do math on just how many tons of feed we needed to make to get through and what I thought we might have in the fields. After several dry weeks, we finally got a shot of rain on Father’s Day. That helped to tide us over, but not much. A few weeks later, just when we were getting concerned again, we got another rain. Since then it seems we have received just enough rain at just the right time to make a good crop.
We finished up our wheat harvest a couple weeks ago and with the dry conditions, we weren’t sure what kind of yields we would get. While the wheat plants were shorter and the crop yielded less straw, the grain yield was better than we hoped and was about the same as our average in other years.
While we don’t want to jinx ourselves, at this time we look to have some very good yields developing out in the fields. Earlier this week we got over two inches of rain which should really help our corn to finish developing. A dry summer has had some positives for the farm. The cows have definitely been enjoying summer with less humidity and fewer flies.
We are about to start our fourth crop of hay and with our fingers crossed, we look to be going into a decent harvest season.