Green But Dry

July has been a very dry month for the Miller Farms in Lucas, Iowa.  The farm received about 1/2 an inch of rain in early July and two "dust settlers" since then for a total of about 3/4 of an inch for the month.  Surprisingly, the grass is still green and the crops look good.  But, stress is beginning to show in the corn with the lower third of some of the stalks now "fired" or turning brown.  There are big cracks beginning to emerge in some of the pastures and fields.  I noticed some large enough that my whole hand can fit into the cracks in the ground.

Last Saturday, Mother Nature was teasing us with rain.  There were some pretty dark storm clouds just to the southeast of the farm, and the radar was hinting that we might get a good soaking -- but that was not to be.  About 6 pm, we did get a brief cloudburst that dropped about 3 tenths of an inch of rain, but it was not enough to even stop up from running the rotary mower in the CRP fields where we were clipping the weeds on the grass seedings.  It was a bit frustrating since I could see the rain falling a mile or so to the east of the farm.  I found out later that a farm just two miles east of mine received almost 3 inches of rain that night.  My crops sure could have used an inch or two.  But, as I said earlier, I should not complain too much since the crops still have a lot of potential and are in good shape as of the end of July.

Friday night was a bit frustrating.  After work I went down to the farm and started the evening by putting a new set of bearings in the wheels of the rotary cutter.  It was quite hot outside, and after about 2 hours of work, my shirt was completely soaked with sweat.  I headed out to the fields to continue clipping the CRP plantings and mowing down the weeds that are growing up in the new grass seedings.  Mowing was going well, although the airconditioning in the tractor cab felt quite cold with the wet shirt I was wearing.  About 11 pm, the main gearbox of the rotary cutter blew apart.  So that was the end of mowing that night.  On Saturday, we spent about 4 hours taking the gearbox off the cutter and taking the gearbox apart.  It appears that a retaining nut had come off the main input shaft into the gearbox and that allowed it to come apart.  Unfortunately, the input shaft appears to be damaged as well as the PTO shaft tubing was bent.  It will probably take $750 to repair the gearbox and the PTO shaft.. 

There are about 55 acres that still need to be clipped so, we used a smaller, 6ft rotary cutter to keep on clipping the CRP ground on Saturday.  We did about 15 acres and have about 40 acres to go.  The smaller cutter does a very nice job of clipping the CRP ground, but we can only cover about 3 acres per hour with it so it takes a lot longer than when we use the 14ft cutter. 

Saturday afternoon, I also did some bulldozing, cleaning out some drainage ditches and waterways.  With the ground as dry as it is, I can run over some areas taht are normally too wet even for a bulldozer to run across.

Let it Grow; Let it Grow

It is the Fourth of July; with bright blue skies, sunshine and warm temperatures today.  I am very glad to see some nice growing weather.  Saturday, we sprayed the soybeans with the second pass of Round-Up to control weeds.  Round-Up is environmentally quite benign and does an excellent job of controlling weeds and lets me grow soybeans with no-till technology.  I like no-till for my rolling hills in southern Iowa.  Leaving a lot of residue like corn stalks on the ground helps control erosion.


The crops are off to a good start, but June has been wet and a bit cool.  We had nearly 10 inches of rain in June, nearly 200% of normal.  And we are about 100 growing degree days behind.  The corn and soybeans do not need 95+ temps, but a string of mid to upper 80s would be nearly ideal.  I think you can actually hear the corn growing on a day like today.  It is stretching upward.  The old saying for a good corn crop was "knee-high by the 4th of July."  But now, I like to see the corn "head-high by the 4th of July."  Most of my corn is just a bit over waist high.  The color is a good dark green, but too much rain could leach out the nitrogen fertilizer and turn the corn yellowish.  I like it when the corn is a dark green.  That is evidence that the crop is using the nutrients that we put on the field.

Brent and I worked on the bulldozer on Saturday.  We put the main mud shield on the bottom of the dozer.  It is a steel "pan" that weighs about 500 pounds and protects the transmission and clutch assemblies from mud and other debris that could get shoved up from underneath when pushing dirt and other things.  After we got the dozer running, we did some clean up at the farmstead.  There was an old chassis from a mobile home that had been setting in the yard for several years.  We moved it to the junk pile and then did some re-shaping of the yard behind the grain bins so that it would be easier to mow.  We also swept out the machine shed and did a few other clean-up chores.  It seems there is always maintenance work to do.  but it feels good to do some hard work and then see the results of one's labors. 

The water has gone down in the bottom fields.  I don't know how much damage the water did, but I am sure that as high as it got, it had to do some silting in the east field and probably killed out some of the new grass seeding that we did in early June.  Hopefully with some hot, dry weather, the grass will come on and I will be able to see whether the $125 per acre of grass seed will take or whether it was all for nothing.  It is hard to do a wetlands restoration when it keeps flooding, but it is just more evidence that putting the bottom fields into the CRP is the right thing for that ground.