This blog has always been and will always be about farming and the different aspects of it. Parts of that involve my pets, my kitchen and my family, but a vast majority of it involves me and my husband, Caleb, and our farming opperation. It was been a while since I have written about what's going on, on our farm.
I won't lie, this time of the year is our "slowest time of the year. The crops are in the ground and growing and the cattle have grass and water so we are able to relax a little more...
...well at least as much as any farmer ever relaxes, which isn't much.
Here are some of the pictures from earlier this sprinf till now of checking the corn and seeing how it was progressing.
One thing you will see a lot of farmers doing during the growing season is walking the fields. They don't just do this for exercise...
...they are out there checking their fields to see how the crops are growing.
They will check for areas that may need to be replanted, for places that are nutrient deficient, if there is a bug infestation, if there is a weed problem, or just to see how it's growing.
Once the ears start to form, the reasons for checking the corn fields completely changes. Now we must go and see how the corn is developing...
...we are looking to see how well the corn pollinated and how big the ears are in hopes to find out we are going to have a bumper crop.
Sometimes you might find the biggest and best ears of corn you have ever seen and other times you find these little wimpy ears. It all just depends on the weather you have had and the variety of corn you planted. Those two things go hand in hand.
Some varieties will do well in drier years and not so well when it's wet and others in the opposite years, while still others may just be average every year.
Here the past few weeks we have seen a lot of this...
...ears of corn laying every where. Caleb can't hardly go by one of our corn fields without stopping to pick an year.
Yesterday he went into corn picking over load while we were on our weekly drive.
He talks about raccoons or deer getting into the corn, but really its just him.
He gets pretty excited when he finds some nice ears like these.
You might not believe me but there is an old man in a straw hat somewhere out in this picture.
...and he was doing the same thing Caleb was doin'...
....snitchin' ears of corn.
Their main reason for getting ears right now is to check and see how close it is to being ready to harvest. With as dry as it's been out our way the corn is gonna be ready before we know it.
To see if the corn is ready you need to check it's moisture, and the way we do that is by hand shelling the corn you picked and then placing it into the moisture tester.
Ya put the lid back on and push the button...
...then let it do it's job.
This particular field was still awful wet, with 30% moisture. You want the moisture to be down somewhere either below 15% or 16% if I say one way or the other it will be wrong so we will just leave it at some where close to that.
We did actually have a couple of fields that were down around 21-22% moisture and Caleb thinks with as hot and dry as it is that we will be harvesting by this time next week.
Well, corn is not the only crop we raise. we also grow soybeans. and somewhere out in this field is a farmer who is hiding down in these beans.
There he is. He's down there checking to see if the plants are setting on any pods or not.
Currently we have a whole lot of these beautiful little purple flowers all over the plants and we are hoping they will turn into pods filled with beans. But if we don't get a really nice rain before long our beans won't have a chance.
Well, that's what's been goin' on with all our crops here on the farm. soon enough we will be harvesting some corn and I will have some of those fun pictures for you.
I have one more set of pictures from our vacation to Minnesota and and a canning post and by the time I get those done I will probably have some harvest pictures to share with you.
Hope all ya'll are doing well and stayin' cool in this crazy heat.
Lot's of Love,
J
You might get better yields if Caleb quit picking the ears. lol ;)
ReplyDeleteOh and to have long legs and be able to crawl OVER the fence is so not fair. It's a huge process for me to go through a fence.
Carrie-Life in the Slow Lane
So glad y'all's corn is doing well. The farmers here had a horrible corn crop this year. It looked terrible.
ReplyDeleteI love reading your farming posts! Agriculture isn't for the faint of heart...hope ya'll get a rain for your beans, soon.
ReplyDeleteI love this post! You do a great job explaining everything and your photos are fantastic.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't plant any corn this year, but we do have a few acres of soybeans. We seriously need some rain. We've had indexes of 110 degrees for the past 2 weeks, and barely any rain at all. It's really taking a toll. We've also had an army worm infestation on bermuda hay fields. We don't have any hay, but we're worried that when the hay gets cut, they will come into our peanut fields, they don't seem to like cotton too much.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I love to see how the corn crops are doing. I had never seen a moisture reader before. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Hopefully you get the rain you need without putting the moisture levels up too high. Our heat indices have been above 110 for the past few days and hopefully tonight (Friday) we will get the cold front come through. Good Luck!!!
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