Fall 2008
September 2008
September is the month when the days start getting shorter and the ground temperature starts cooling enough for wheat to germinate and sprout. This means it is time to start planting wheat. During the early part of September we are busy getting the wheat drill and trucks ready. The first part of September was unseasonably warm and dry but on September 11th we had over 10 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. As is always the case in life, too much of anything, even something good, is a very bad thing. Big rains like that are very destructive. Fences were washed away and terraces were washed out.
Beginning on the 18th we started planting. This task took much longer than usual because we had to fix the washouts and problems created by the rain. We completed planting on October 5th. During wheat planting we are extremely busy. Our days usually start before daylight and involve loading the truck, getting everything situated in the field and then driving the tractor all day until dark. Planting wheat involves one tractor pulling a cultivator that tills, evens out and firms up the soil. The second tractor pulls the grain drill. Our drill is thirty feet wide and plants 48 rows of wheat in one pass. We seed wheat at a rate of 90 lbs or 1.5 bushels per acre. Drills hold 45 bushels of wheat at a time. We use a truck to bring wheat to the field to fill the drill.
October 2008
We use the month of October to clean up and put away or park all our tractors and machinery. Also, we do a lot of maintenance on our corrals where we start calves. Welding and replacing anything broken, bent or rotten due to constant use. This year we spent a considerable amount of time going out into our tender, newly emerged wheat checking for Army Worms. Army Worms are multistage little, cut worms that, when small, remove chlorophyll from plant leaves. When the worm matures, they just eat the whole leaf and kill the plant. Several neighbors lost whole fields of wheat. We checked throughout the month but only had one field become infested. We caught it in time and hired a crop dusting plane to spray the field.
October presents a difficult challenge when starting cattle. Weaned cattle stress even harder when we have temperature swings from day to night. This is October in
November 2008
November is the month we begin turning cattle on wheat pasture. A little over six weeks have passed since we’ve planted the wheat and it has emerged, tillered out and now covers the ground with lush pasture which contains over 20% protein. This is great for cattle to eat and rapidly gain weight. One thing we also do in November is haul hay from our supplier back to our farm. We haul 20 big round bales weighing 1500 lbs each on our semi-truck in each load.
The economic conditions facing the country also have affected us here on the farm. The price of wheat has fallen by nearly 50% since harvest in June and the price of cattle has fallen nearly 25% during the same time. Cattle prices falling is both good and bad news for us. The good news is the light calves we are buying to sell in 6 to 8 months cost less but our bigger cattle are much less profitable. Fuel prices have come down which is great news as we drive 50 to 60 miles per day checking and feeding cattle.
We spent a great Thanksgiving with family stuffing ourselves with food. Thanksgiving is a time when we should all reflect how lucky we are to live in a free country.
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