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.