Life on the Farm

[bjrogg]

This morning started out looking good. Truck load of pinto beans and sun.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Unfortunately just about the time everything was almost dry enough it started to rain.

[chamookman]

Hope Your rain was a spotty as Ours was here. Good Luck - Bob.

[bjrogg]

It was pretty spotty and light here Bob. We had about a tenth of an inch yesterday afternoon but the wind blew and the sun came back out before it went down. It sure looked worse on the radar.

They took a lot of the rain out of forecast now . Hopefully we can get through today and then we get some combining weather.

I would really like to get these pintos harvested before we have to do early digs which I’m guessing will be this weekend sometime. I’m hoping to find out today when we have to dig.

Glad your rain was spotty Bob. I’m sure you guys have plenty to last the rest of the year already.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

No pinto beans today. Drizzle and 67 degrees. Perfect white mold weather.

I looked at our black bean fields this morning. They still look really nice. Hope they stay that way. Probably about two weeks from harvest.

I just got a call about early dig beets. Not confirmed yet, but heard it through the grapevine they want to pick up our beet’s Tuesday. That means Sunday and Monday dig. Right when the weather hopefully gets good enough to go at our pinto beans again. This drizzle is really messing with our schedule.

I’m really hoping to get a lot of stuff done this month so I can get a few hunts in next month.

Still have to finish pinto beans, dig early dig sugar beets, harvest black beans, plant winter wheat, plant cover crops and do tillage. Plus all the normal stuff.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Drizzle on the windshield

[bjrogg]

A black bean plant I pulled. It’s one of the greener ones. I think my timing applying the protectants was really good. The straw looks really healthy and so far no white mold. I think my first application for my pintos was a little too late. I got started almost on time but got rained out before I got half done. Couldn’t get in field for three very critical days. Once the white mold is started it’s extremely difficult to control and impossible to kill. Unless Mother Nature decides to give it a dose of hot dry weather. Which we didn’t get this year.

Really nice healthy looking black bean plant.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Last week the weather forecast for this week was very hot and dry all week long. Just exactly what we were needing.

This week came and it completely ignored the weather forecast. We had a couple days of clouds and drizzle then a few days of very humid hot weather. And now when the humidity is supposed to have dropped it has rained and is still raining for three days now. Exactly what we didn’t need.

This rain is really going to hurt. I’m not sure the pinto beans will even be worth harvesting by the time they get dry enough if they get dry enough.

We are going to have black beans ready before we get the pinto bean if we don’t get good drying weather and more than two hours of it.

The workload  just keeps getting heavier and more complicated.

Our perfect year is starting to crumble. This is when it gets really hard to be a farmer. We’ve been here before and we have come to expect it, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

We do our best to avoid it and if it comes then we do our best to deal with it.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Partly cloudy today. Not drying great but at least it isn’t raining and we didn’t get heavy rain.

The beans color still looks good but they took on plenty of moisture that will have to naturally dry before we can harvest them.

I’m hoping tomorrow we might be able to. Monday doesn’t sound like a good combine day and Tuesday is saying heavy rain.

Sunday is going to be a busy day if we can. I have to dig early dig sugar beets too. We will be trying to get enough help for two crews. I’m really hoping everything goes smoothly and we can get the pinto beans before the heavy rains.

Also hope the new (to us) beet digger works good. I don’t like working sundays anymore than anyone else, but it’s better if everything goes good.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Still no weather for harvesting pinto beans.

Was light drizzle again with lots of clouds. It actually really felt like beet digging weather and that’s what we did. We dug 34 acres of early digs. These beet go directly to the factories. They will be picked up tomorrow. And made into sugar shortly after that.

We put them on a pile by the road and then they use a Maus to clean and load them on big trucks parked on the road.

Hopefully it doesn’t rain to much because it really makes a mess when they do it in the rain.

Bjrogg

[chamookman]

Glad to see some progress! Looks like after this Morning, no rain til Sunday. Prayin' for Ya ! Bob

[bjrogg]

Thanks Bob. We are fortunate that we haven’t had heavy rain. They were forecasting 1 1/2” and then another two days of .5”.

We had .6” and then just like before light persistent drizzle.

Today I went to the eye doctor and they dilated my eyes. It’s still cloudy but it’s much brighter.lol

Really hoping to get these pintos before there’s nothing left to get.

The beans still look good, but the straw is deteriorating very badly and pods are falling off yet. We are definitely going to have huge harvest losses even if we could get them today and they have to dry down yet. Even with my eyes dilated I can see that it’s not going to be today yet. Still talking little drizzle showers possible. Hopefully more sunshine though.

Getting really tired of this view.

Bjrogg

[Deerhunter21]

Praying for good weather for ya Bj! Hope things run smoothly!

[bjrogg]

Thank You Russell.

The sun shined the past day and a half pretty decent. I was hoping the pinto beans would get dry enough but they were still just a little bit too wet. We have been having lows in the 40’s and very heavy dews.

The sun is shining this morning. We still had a very heavy dew but I’m hoping the beans will get dry today. They aren’t as wet as they have been the past few mornings. Still pretty wet though.

Hopefully I can post some more pictures of pinto bean harvest soon.

Our early dig sugar beets did amazing. Dug September 10. Approximately a month and ten days before beginning of permanent piles. They cleaned up at 31 tons per acre and the sugar content was 15.74%.

Those are pretty impressive numbers. Hopefully the sugar continues to climb. Would like to see a company average in the 19 % area for permanent piles. If we are going to have to dispose of beets we don’t have the capacity to process before they spoil. I certainly hope the tons we get processed at least have a good sugar content

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

We have been getting some stuff done.

We are trying a different type of cover crop in our wheat stubble this year. We seeded a mixer of rye and radish. The radish are a special variety that acts as a trap host for sugar beet cyst nematodes. They will die with a hard freeze. The rye will grow through the winter and be there in the spring. We will probably do one tillage pass and plant sugar beets into it next spring. Then after the beet crop emerges and it gives enough wind protection it will be terminated.