Wild Spring Weather Sets Up a Busy Summer
This spring has brought some wild swings in weather. April started incredibly wet and kept us out of the fields until the start of May. Usually, we like to start our first pass of tillage for weed control the last week of April, but we weren’t able to start until the end of the first week of May. Once it dried out, it was a race to try to get ahead of the weeds that had been enjoying the moisture and warm weather.
Corn Planted, Weed Management Underway
We were able to start planting the only field of regular corn that we have on May 6, and it was ideal conditions for planting corn. We started planting our organic corn on May 13, which is a little earlier than we planned because, as wet as April was, May has been equally dry and we wanted to get planted before the soil got too dry. Corn needs moisture to germinate and get ahead of the weeds, so we had to start planting deeper as the dry weather continued. Following the planter pass, we ran our tine weeder to try to kill any small weeds that are germinating with the corn. We will follow the tine weeder pass with another tine weeder pass before we switch to row crop cultivating. We plan to finish corn around May 25 and start beans right around the first of June.
Preparing to plant the corn plot.
Testing Hybrids to Guide Next Year’s Decisions
One of the most fun things we do on our farm is plant both an organic corn and soybean test plot. The idea is to plant a variety of hybrids and varieties from different seed suppliers in a field under our management practices to help us make decisions on what to plant the next year. This allows us to look not only at final yield, but also emergence speed, disease tolerance, standability, and how each hybrid responds to weather. This year in our corn plot we had 57 different hybrids as well as 7 check strips of the same hybrid that were placed between each company to account for field variability in order to make sure that everything is measured fairly.
Our soybean plot has 27 varieties with 5 check strips and includes both feed grade (food for animals) and food grade (food for humans) soybeans. This will help us make a decision for next year on planting beans. We will be able to get a better idea of what the yield drag is on the food grade beans and whether the premium makes up for it.
We are field cultivating for weed control and making a seed bed.
Peak Season on the Farm
June is probably our busiest month of the whole year. We are still planting beans while tine weeding and cultivating corn, rotary hoeing the planted beans, loading out our organic corn that we have stored in the bin, mowing filter strips and road ditches, as well as starting on wheat harvest the last week of June. Once wheat harvest wraps up, things slow down and we can enjoy some time to relax. ■
Josh Faivre is a third-generation farmer who grows corn and soybeans on his family’s farm in rural DeKalb. He is also a seed dealer.