Summer weather..

[Clam77]

I know there's already a weather topic...  But does anyone have any guesses on how dry it's going to get this summer without most of us having had much snow this winter and similar amounts of rain since??

At our current rate, I'm predicting a long, DRY summer with bad crop results come fall...

[thecfarm]

I've been saying the same thing. I hope it remembers to rain.

[WDH]

Unfortunately, I have gotten used to it.

[sandhills]

I'm with you Clam77, I'm afraid of a really dry summer or very bad storms when it does hit, hope we're wrong  :-\.

[chevytaHOE5674]

We had a few days of summer now back to spring. Been raining every 2-3 days and temps have been cool. Being so close to the lake we don't usually experience the wild temp and precipitation swings that the rest of the country sees... Thank goodness. But other areas could be in for a doozy of a summer.

[Clam77]

There's farmers working the fields here already - and they're stirring up dust.  Definately not good. 

My brother has his own tiling business for field tile and the like - he's already hitting dry dirt 2-4' in the ground in places.  Even worse.   :-\  :-\

[sandhills]

There's quite a bit of field work going on around here also, I heard someone say yesterday that we're supposed to have a high in the nineties on Saturday.  I don't know if that's right or not but everything's greening up like it is, I think I missed spring too (not to mention winter).

[Norm]

There's farmers working the fields here already - and they're stirring up dust.

You could see all of my dust from there, yikes! I'm all done with field prep and we are on track to plant corn on the 12th weather permitting. Of course that date may change but we have asparagus up in the garden which is usually when we plant our corn.

[wheelinguy]

There was a burn ban put into place on the 17th of march here, usually still dealing with feet of snow at that point.  With little rain last summer, except the two big ones that caused floods, and little snow it has been a topic of conversation around here.  Farmers were plowing their fields in februaury in the northern part of the state!

[chevytaHOE5674]

Fresh snow on the ground this morning....

[Clam77]

I'm all done with field prep and we are on track to plant corn on the 12th weather permitting....

I'm pretty sure if the 12th wasn't just an insurance date, it'd already be happening Norm..    :D

[sandhills]

One of my neighbors claims he's going to plant a quarter of corn tomorrow just so he can say he did it on the first of April.  No doubt in my mind he will, but me, I figure it's expensive enough to do it the first time around, why would I want to do it twice?  Normally in these parts planting starts anywhere from the 20th to the 25th of April, and you still have to worry about a late freeze.

[Norm]

Seed is in very short supply this year so we'll look at the 10 day forecast to make sure we only do it once. Our neighbor to our office is CPS an ag supply company. They started carrying Dekalb seeds a few years ago and asked if I'd be interested to try some to compare to the Pioneer seeds I use. Buddy I farm with asked what variety it was and I told it's my new favorite...free!  :D

[Mark K]

We are getting some rain here this past week. Started plowing the week before, ground is hard. We run a eight bottom kvernland plow and are lucky to get 30 acres out of a set of wear tips before we roll them over. Last year we got 50+. Main points are wearing just as quick. Ordered a seventeen foot deep tillage brillion soil commander thats coming out of Iowa and suppose to arrive tomorrow to break up the hard pan. We figure that because we didnt have a normal frost this year the ground never got loosened up. Norm-we are having a shortage of seed here too. We are a Pioneer seed dealer, gutted our dairy freestall when we sold the cows and turned it into a warehouse. We plant 1100 acres of corn and 900 acres of beans. Bean seed hasnt gone up much in price here but corn has.

[Norm]

That Brillion will take some horsepower to pull Mark, what are you going to hook to it? I use a 12' JD 512 ripper on my place and use an 285hp MFWD with it. Takes every bit of that too.

[Mark K]

We tried out a smaller one in the fall and pulled it with our 8110. We have a Bulldog computer hooked to the pump to give her a little more umph. It played with it. Our fields have many different types of soil from sandy loam, clay and gravel. We plan on pulling it with a 8650 JD articulating. Wont be used on all ground as we do zone tilling. It should save a lot of moldboard plowing which we are trying to get away from due to the price of fuel and wear parts. We bought a 12 row chopper head this fall for our combine and it worked excellent at chopping up the stubble. We had to moldboard about 300 acres last fall and this spring because we had to wait for a heavy duty gearbox kit to come for the 9760. Ours had the lighter duty drives and we where smoking header drive belts every 50-60 acres. Belts where $560 a piece dealer cost so we had to go back to our old head till the kit came. In the future we only plan on moldboarding sod ground.

[Norm]

The 8650 should do a great job with it. I use my buddies to rip with on his place and it doesn't even know it's back there. Let me know how you like the chopper head for the combine this fall. It's getting time to do something with the bt stalks, they are killing our tires.

[Mark K]

We used the chopper head late last fall after we put the heavy duty kit on. Works great, stalks are chopped good enough to not plug the zone tiller. Use roughly a gallon and a half more fuel per hour compared to the conventional head. Saves alot of time and fuel in the end. If you do decide to go that route make sure your machine has the updated drives. The JD head runs knives similar to a brush hog but smaller and they take some power. Theres another head out there that uses a screw system to shred. Nieghbor has one, runs easier but has expensive wear parts. We hope the 8650 will handle it. The soil commander we ordered has 30" spacing. Didnt think we could pull one with 20" spacing. I'll let you know how it goes. Waiting in the shop now, suppose to be here this afternoon. Coming in pieces, should be fun to put together.

[Clam77]

Should be ok if you can keep that horsepower on the ground.  My brother runs a 350+hp Steiger to do tiling work - pulling a drag-along trencher anywhere from 2-4' deep through everything including glacial clay.  Never runs out of power but a little extra weight on the front end would do a world of difference as far as spinning out with that front end pulling like it does.

[Mark K]

I put it into the field for the first time this morning. I thought we ordered a 30" spacing but we got a 20". Has 9 deep tillage shanks, discs front and back. We're ripping 16" deep with the discs down, pulling in B2 which gives us five and a half mph. Norm was right, it pulls hard. Not lugging the tractor at this speed but not toying with it either. Going to do some bean ground this afternoon, see what happens. We're real impressed with the results so far on corn stubble.

[Norm]

Sounds like it matches up with the tractor just right, 9 shanks are not easy to pull.

[sandhills]

If you're pulling that 5.5 mph 16" deep I don't think I'd ask for much more  ;).

[Norm]

Well our summer weather left just in time for corn planting season. It's been in the mid 50's with temps going into the mid 20's overnight, I doubt we'll have much of a peach or apple crop because of it. I've seen a few guys planting corn and have heard of a couple that are done. For us we'll wait until next week as we've got rain coming in and am not going to risk $300 dollar corn seed to cold wet soils. So now it's hurry up and wait....

[SwampDonkey]

Snowed here for 3 days, no accumulation. Finally some rain this evening for the first time all spring. Temps in the 30's and 40's, only varies 10-14 degrees from day and night. No one will be scratching the ground here until almost May this spring unless it warms up a lot. So far, just a normal spring aside from the week of hot air in March. Suits me just fine. 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Had about 2-3" of slush accumulations this morning... Other than that it is extremely dry for this time of year, with very little rainfall in the last month.

[sandhills]

Yep summer went away and spring got here, had about a 1/4" of ice on the dog bowl yesterday morning (that would be redneck for thermometer).  I sure hope you guys are getting more rain than we are Norm, we really haven't had any considerable moisture since last summer, very dry around here.

[Norm]

No unfortunately we are not Pat. We're supposed to get rain for a few days starting tomorrow, if it fizzles like the last two storms that went through I'll start getting worried we'll be facing a major drought this year.

[Kansas]

Corn planters going like crazy here trying to get corn in before the rain. Think its supposed to hit Friday night. Pasture burning seems to have come to a halt. Last summers drought didn't leave much left, and the grass is up early this year.

I haven't checked much for weather, but it seems to me there has been rain developing over Texas and Oklahoma. If its raining down there, should spread up north to Kansas and Iowa. Time will tell. I know my lake is back to about full. I think we will have some moisture this summer; problem is, what kind of temps come with it.

[sandhills]

Been raining here off and on since about 9 this am, it's a cold rain but I ain't giving any of it back!  I sure hope it keeps this up for a few days then I'll send it over to you Norm.  Kansas, not to far south of here I saw a couple planters going on Monday, other than that just a few brave folks around here have planted their sweet corn.  I planted a few short rows of walnuts last fall and checked them the other day, they were cracking and sprouting but I was gonna have to start hauling water to them, hopefully today will take care of that at least for awhile.

[Patty]

I heard yesterday that new saplings need 5-7 gallons of water per week to get going strong during a dry year, Pat. At least that is the rule of thumb around here.

[sandhills]

I was gonna try to run a dripper hose down the rows to them the other day and just rig it up to one of our water tanks, I don't have any water source close by but the other day we got about an inch of rain and it's been stormy here so far today with rain.  Patty, I just planted the actual walnuts last fall so thankfully they aren't out of the ground yet because we got some big hail this morning, hope you guys can get some of this rain too, preferably without the storms.

[Clam77]

This storm that's coming through tonite is about to hit us as I'm typing this sandhills - probably already hitting Norm & Patty according to the radar.. 

According to the National Weather Service, this is only the 2nd time in history that they've put out warnings 24+ hrs in advance of a storm.  They were warning that it'd be "life threatening" yesterday afternoon. 

[sandhills]

Clam77, we got another one rolling in right now and it sure sounds like they got a mess south of us, all through Kansas and Oklahoma.  Hope everybody's ok tonight, sounds like it won't drop off much tomorrow for the folks east of us either.

[Norm]

Finally got a good soaker! Some tornadoes south and west of us but nothing but rain for us.