Let it Rain

20 acres planted with soy beans two weeks ago

Sunday evening I walked out into a bean field. I walked 30′ into a bean field before I found any beans. I knew it was dry, everyone did – the next chance at rain was all we or any of our neighbors could think about. We heard all week that Sunday night was our best shot. That evening we watched the weather, anxiously, as they showed the areas expected to see rain – we weren’t one of them. Disappointed, we went to bed.

Tiny soy bean plants i found 30 feet from the edge of the field.

At 1 am Monday morning I woke to thunder and lightening. I listened closely, and yes, IT WAS RAINING! I sat up in bed and checked the radar; I was ecstatic to see that we were catching the tail end of a storm. We prayed aloud thanking God for whatever rain He had provided. It was so dry, any amount would help. I woke up for work at 3:45 am, and I again heard thunder. In total, we got somewhere around .7″ of rain. That takes us to about 1″ in the last 30 days.

It’s too early to be this dry. The thing about farming is, you do all you can. We put down fertilizer, sprayed the weeds, and planted our beans, unsure whether they would even come up. And then we pray. That’s all that’s left to do. Late last summer we all prayed for rain, and we got rain…and wind that blew down corn, and hail that stripped beans. Now – we pray for crops. We pray that the Lord bless us with what we need to get by: to have enough corn and silage to feed our cows and enough beans to pay our bills.

I’m sure my friends who aren’t involved in agriculture grew tired of my constant obsession with rain over the last month. This is the life of a farmer, though. We can’t help it. All of the good business decisions in the world won’t save our crops if the weather doesn’t cooperate. And without our crops, we might not be able to feed our cows. To those of you who dealt with my obsession – thanks for listening. We got what we so desperately needed, and now we hope for a little more, but not too much more… As anyone who knows farmers knows — we’re rarely satisfied with the weather.

#Plant12 Progress Report

Sorry for no post last week and a late one this week. Things have maybe been even busier than usual, apparently. What have we been doing?  Well, we’ve been doing lots of planting!

Crops

About a month ago we borrowed a drill with a seeder from our neighbor to plant oats and seed alfalfa simultaneously. We plan to mow and chop the oats and then hopefully get 2 or 3 cuttings off the alfalfa this year. Also, the alfalfa will come back and should provide good feed for the cows for two more years. We’re really pleased with how it’s growing so far.

The taller, grassy stuff is the oats, and the small round leaves are the alfalfa.

The plan (I should know better by now…) was to start planting corn immediately after we finished the oats, but first we had to get the planter going again. It was ready before the fire disintegrated the monitor and ruined the wiring. We replaced the wiring harness and monitor, hooked it up to a different tractor, and got started planting a couple of weeks ago. We finished about 70% of our corn planting before stopping to chop the cereal rye that we planted last fall.

David’s view from the tractor while planting corn

We haven’t finished the rye yet, but when we do we’ll continue planting corn. Many grain farmers have finished their corn planting, but it actually helps us to have our corn crop spaced out a little bit to give us some time to chop corn silage later this summer. If all of the corn is ready at the same time, and we can’t keep up, it could hurt our feed for next year. We also have a few acres of beans to plant before we officially finish the planting season. 

Garden

A few weeks ago, my parents came to visit and help us with some things around the house. While my dad tilled the garden (thanks, Dad!), my mom and I went plant shopping.  We actually went looking for some bushes and annuals, but I also bought most of the veggies for our garden. It took me nearly a week to find time to plant them, but one night after work when we were expecting a rain, I decided I had to get them in the ground. I planted various tomatoes and peppers along with cucumbers, squash and a watermelon plant. I finished just as it was getting dark and had to have David help me water everything while I held a flashlight.

This past weekend I got around to planting the seeds I had bought – onions, radishes and green beans. In a few weeks we will plant more radishes and green beans, in order to stagger our harvest somewhat, and also intend to expand the garden or start a new one to make room for sweet corn. It seems like it takes forever for the plants to start producing, but thankfully, last year we planted strawberries.  They come back each year, and we have really been enjoying them so far this spring. I can’t wait to have more fresh fruits and veggies to enjoy!

The strawberry patch, in the daylight.

Flowers

I mentioned that when my mom and I went plant shopping, our primary objective was to buy flowers and bushes. We bought snap dragons and dahlias to fill in and add summer color to the big flower bed that is home to all of our perennials. We also got a variety of annuals (portulaca, geraniums, angelonia, osteopermum, and several more) to fill in three pots and three other, much smaller, flower beds. We also found a eunonymous bush to replace an azalea that the pets destroyed and a hydrangea to replace a rhododendron that just never thrived and eventually bit the dust. 

My mom helped me plant the bushes and many of the flowers. When we finished, we also put fresh mulch down.  Everything looks great freshly mulched and watered.  Now’s the fun part – sitting back and watching everything grow!!

Corn starting to come up.

Spring Is Here!!

Spring is here! How do we know?  Well, the tulips are blooming, and the grass needs mowed.  We mentioned in our first post that our goals are to improve things around our farm and home, but in some cases, we really want to restore things to their former glory.  This is the case with our landscaping.

Martha, David’s grandmother, was fairly well known for her flowers.  She was always outside tending to her gardens.  It takes a lot of work to keep up with the amount of landscaping she had, though, so once she was no longer able to care for it, it quickly declined.  The first time I came to the farm, all of her flowerbeds were filled with weeds or lost to grass or gravel in the barnyard.  When I say all, I don’t know even know how many I’m referring to.  Each year we find more bricks buried underground that used to edge a flower bed.  Thankfully, in some of the flower beds, under the weeds were Martha’s peonies, daffodils and tulips.

Bricks dug out of the ground in the barnyard edging a flower bed after a hail storm last summer.

Two years ago, shortly before we got married, David and I invited my parents to come visit for a work weekend.  For those of you who don’t know my parents, they are pretty into their landscaping, and they’re very good at growing things. Their previous home was actually featured on some kind of local landscaping tour, and they’ve always done 100% of the installation and maintenance themselves.  The four of us spent two full days working on cleaning and replanting the five main flower beds around the house.  We saved what we could of Martha’s flowers, and added some of our own.

Three of Martha's peonies beneath a garage window.

The largest bed, next to the garage, was and is the home of Martha’s famous peonies.  When I mentioned tearing out the beds and starting over, the only instruction I received was that we had to keep the peonies.  We split the plants that needed it, and transplanted some to a fence line where they used to grow.  I think everyone in the family has some of Martha’s peonies, but should anyone need anymore, we intend this fence row to be the place to transplant from.  We have white, light pink, and dark pink peonies, and I think we may have discovered something new last year.  There were also some tulips in this flower bed, and below is what the peony blooms on the plant closest to the tulips looked like last year.  I found through a search that there are peony varieties that look like this, but no one recalls any of Martha’s being one of those.

Yellow Tulips 2011

Yellow Tulip 2012

Pink peony bloom.

Pink peony bloom nearest the tulips.

Speaking of the tulips…when left to their own devices, tulips do not thrive.  What had once been many many flowers had become three plants, only two of which bloomed. That fall I dug and split the bulbs, and last year we had many more plants come up and five that bloomed.

Yellow tulips spring 2011

After doing the same last fall, I have been really excited to see this year’s results.  So far there appear to be seven buds, and the first two bloomed yesterday…with more interesting results.  Because I didn’t know what color tulips each of the many bulbs I discovered would produce, I just placed them all randomly in a trench.  The first to bloom this year is yellow, like three of last year’s five were, but it has some very distinct red tinting to it also.  I don’t know if you can create hybrids by planting things close together, but we’re definitely getting some variations year-to-year.

Yellow tulip bloom 2012

Regardless, we’re pleased with the results.  Each year we take a few more steps toward restoring the landscaping to it’s former glory.  The peonies are thriving, and the tulips are working on it.  Spring has sprung!  It’s time to get to work on this year’s landscaping!