Every year on the farm is different, not always good or bad,
but definitely different. I should have know this having grown up here on the
farm, but it is being taught to me afresh on the 5
th summer we
have been home from school and I have been working full time on the farm. Pretty
hard to believe that time goes so fast.
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| Morning dew on the winter wheat |
This spring the weather was a little cool and wet early on.
When we were seeding spring wheat it was hard to wait for the ground to be dry
enough, and some of our little seedlings suffered from being planted in ground
that was too wet. We are always in a bit of a hurry in the spring because we
know that there is a lot to do in the months ahead, and we like to get an early
start to get ahead. In this case, we likely would have been a little better off
waiting more, but it is hard to tell in the moment. I was also very excited to
see the spring wheat stand because we refitted the seed drill with new “paired
row” points. These points place two rows of seed about 3 inches apart and a fertilizer
bind down the center. I was hoping that this would shorted the time it takes
for the seed to “grow” to the fertilizer, and in conditions when the soil was
not too wet, it worked pretty well. By late spring we either had stands that were
beautiful, or stands that were seeded too wet. I am happy with the results from
updating the drill, and am looking forward to see how it changes the winter
wheat stand this fall and going into next spring.
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| One of my homes away from home, but it is better with company |
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| New paired-row points on the drill, seed down each side, fertilizer down the middle |
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| My navigator for a trip to Reardan for seed |
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| It was a little wet seeding |
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She's getting to be pretty good help around the shop, although
Erin isn't looking forward to the laundry |
As spring warmed up into summer we got started with our hay
harvest. It became pretty obvious early on into haying that it was going to be
a light crop. Historically hay yields are very very consistent, but this year
our average yield was down by 40%. That means that we have 500ton less hay to
sell this season, which means about $90,000 less income than usual. On the positive
side, less hay meant that the hay harvest went relatively smoothly, although I would
take the challenges of a big crop over being short on hay any year. I think
that the reason the hay crop was so shirt is related to winter moisture. Last
winter we had two very early, very cold snaps that froze the ground solid. The
frost stayed in the ground all winter, which prevented pretty much all of the
snow and rainfall over the winter months from going into the ground. This meant
that coming into spring and summer the moisture reserves deep in the soil profile
were lacking. Alfalfa is a very deep rooted plant that relies heavily on deep
moisture, so when there is not enough water there, the plant just can grow as
big.
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| First field of hay being baled |
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Every year I feel like I watch the wheat grown all spring, then
haying starts, and by the time it is over, the wheat is all headed
out and almost ready for harvest. This year I caught it headed, but
green, and a nice sunset too. |
After hay harvest, we always roll on into wheat harvest. The
summer weather was okay on the wheat for us; though it was on the dry side. I
think every time it looked like the wheat was starting to get drought stressed,
we would get a bit of a shower to keep it going. While this kept us from having
a crop failure, it is not way to really grow a bumper crop.
Come time to harvest we did start getting some
rain, not exactly perfect timing, but that’s farming. Harvest was stop and go,
we would cut till it rained, then wait for it to dry back out. Yields were
really all over the board. Winter wheat was as high at 75 bushels per acre (bpa),
but average about 42 bpa. Spring wheat was as high as 50 bpa but only averaged
30 bpa
. It seems like fields that
have been most planted to wheat over the years are not yielding as well as
those that have not been farmed recently, or have had a lot of hay crops in their
background. These are trends that we are considering when looking to future
crop rotations and planting plans.
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| Jared unloading wheat |
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| My truck buddy, heading out the spend the morning with me |
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The 2014 Crew
Jared, Jayney, Dusty, Tim, Cameron, and Kyle |
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| Our friend, Chris even came for a combine driving lesson this year. |
Throughout Eastern Washington fall planting conditions were
exceptionally dry, but we were very fortunate to have excellent moisture in our
fallow to plant our winter wheat crop. We had 900acres in and mostly up before
Oct 1st, the 188 acres that was on garb ground did not make it up
until part way through October, but still looks like it will be a good stand
going into winter.
The slightly lower wheat yields, and the very short hay year
has combined to make it a tough financial year for us. We have also grown over
500acres in the last three years which has stretched our operating money very
thin and we are going to have to change some things in the next year to accommodate
for that. As challenging and stressful as the money side of the farm can be for
me, I am excited to see what the next years hold.
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As every farmer knows, one advantage of working sun-up to sun-down
is getting to see all those sunsets |
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| Cameron captured this one, great perspective |
I love what I do for
a living and I am blessed to be able to do it. To quote Paul Harvey, “And on the 8th day, God looked down on his
planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a
farmer.” I do not always see how what I do has an impact for God, I’m not often
in contact with new people to share my beliefs with, I’m not traveling the
world to spread the gospel, but I firmly believe that farming here and now is
what god has called me to do, so this is what I’ll do till he tells me
otherwise.
