Storms came through last Thursday, knocking out power and doing some damage in the area. A tornado took a neighbor’s barn and flipped a pivot about 2 miles away. We still have some tree branches to clean up but didn’t receive any major damage. Monday was delayed though as power was not restored to the farm buildings until mid-afternoon. This week brought a much-appreciated reprieve from heat and high heat indexes.
Racing against another round of storms made this a busy week. This looks to be a continuing pattern for at least another week. I sprayed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. After getting all the bugs out, dad was finally able to start nitrogen applications to corn on Monday evening. We covered a lot of ground and are happy with where we sit today. Fortunately for us, heavy rains projected for late Wednesday didn’t materialize and we received a general half- to three-quarters of an inch with no damaging wind or hail.
I’m down to the last few fields of corn to re-spray. I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had to spray fields to kill the weeds that were out there but also needed rain to activate the residual products. Well, between killing the emerged weeds and rainfall to make the residual products work, new weeds came up and started growing. So, this week I was making that second trip on many fields.
Other than the early burndown trip on soybeans, we haven’t been able to treat those acres recently. Weeds aren’t that bad, but the ones that are out there are getting big enough that size is a concern. We are adding additional chemistry to our planned trip. This expense will cost about $12-15 per acre, which is more than the price we’re getting for a bushel of soybeans.
Mark was able to roll two more fields of soybeans on Monday. They were as big as we wanted to see them, at the V3 growth stage. That left us with a field and a half that we were not able to get across. Both fields were too wet and now the crop is too big.
Hopefully, we can get back to nitrogen applications on Friday. I should probably be spraying but will be gone at basketball official camp. It’s like continuing education. I haven’t been able to attend for several years, but this year fits the schedule. Ava agreed to go with me, we will see how she likes it!