What's The Point

Good morning. Dr. Warren says a good story has three parts. First a picture that you can see life in action. Next a good story is a mirror showing insight and relating to ourselves. And then finally a window giving vision and advice to others.

Last week Sunday we visited about waiting and trusting. The forecast said we had a 24 hour window of opportunity with showers moving back in late Monday. So late Sunday night we had a team meeting talking about a plan and what we could get accomplished in that 24 hour window.

This is Kurt planting soybeans just west of Oskaloosa while John and I pulled intakes so he could plant the backs of small terraces.

Mark planted some beans for us as well as getting in a fair amount of custom work.

It's summer time. That means school is out and the grandkids were part of the team feeling important and needed, being able to help.

As we all experienced the weather forecast was wrong and we farmed all week. Our seed shed went from half full to empty in just 6 days. I don't want to share the numbers because it would sound like bragging however it was phenomenal how many bags were planted.

Karl sprayed second pass rowed corn day and night with Jim bringing him loads of spray with the semi. Thanks for the picture Emily.

Many of our crew started at or before daylight. This is Pablo going to New Sharon for a load of treated urea. Wet weather causes nitrogen loss in the soil.

There are various opinions on whether or not to add N to this corn crop. I was told by a larger farmer that we were throwing our money away and we were just saving the crop insurance folks money since he felt this year's crop had little potential due to lateness and yellow uneven plants. However we are trusting with God's help we can turn this crop around. Alex spread over 6000 acres this past week for ourselves and others adding another 40 to 50 pounds of N.

Life doesn't happen without the unexpected and machinery is no different. Around 10 pm one evening Alex pulled in to the shop with the repair truck following him. 3 hours later the electrical problem was found and fixed.

Kurt replanted a farm of corn that was earlier planted just ahead of a hard rain and didn't emerge adequately. We have more fields to evaluate and decide what to do tomorrow. After not getting in our corn test plot on the Eddyville flats in a timely way I went in and filled in the plot with regular 110 day corn. About the only thing we will learn from that plot this year will be corn yield with an April 15 planted date and corn yield with a June 7 planting date.

BJ planted Kurt's corn on his rented farm southwest of Lovila. Karl went in on the same day and one passed sprayed it.

More and more options are becoming available in the way of seed treatments. This field on the Lacey blacktop had a 105 day hybrid with regular treatment on half of the 24 row planter and another 105 day related hybrid with extra biological treatment on the other half. This year was a noticeable difference.

We traded up jobs some this week however Kasey usually runs the John Deere sprayer and it was partially busy spraying planted soybean acres. Tomorrow Kasey will finish up the dirty fields that didn't get a pre herbicide, change to skinny tires, and then start second pass soybean acres.

This week's dry weather allowed Mike and Mark to dig a hog house pit for Brett. This project had been on hold waiting for a window of opportunity.

It was a good week to hay. It's just hard to do everything at once. BJ was able to bale some and we have more down for next week.

Well the first part of our visit was the story. The pictures of our week. However my primary point is not the work accomplished. It's about the mirror part of the story about how I feel God gave me and others a window of opportunity. That trust thing we talked about last week. And it's about the window part of the story where we take the time and effort to look out and see others. Remember Malaki picking and washing strawberries last week. Well his Mom, Kristin, made us all individual little strawberry pies, found us where we were working, and brought us coffeetime one morning. Thank you gals for your help, support and patience.

It's about our family and help working together as a team. It's about the folks we work for. It's about all the conversations with customers and friends. About keep trying or prevent plant. About replanting so late. About some crops looking better. About other crops still looking tough as nails and what to do. About health struggles. About possible financial hardships depending on this crop. All conversations with good folks. 

There were many folks that went the extra mile, that put in extra hours, that tried extra hard to help make things happen. Thanks Nathan for all the extra hours loading loads of spray. Thanks Kathy for making it happen on the dry urea. Thanks Dana and Matt for hunting up seed. Thanks Robin for dry spreader repairs during the night. Thanks Carl for sending out two mechanics driving 40 miles to help fix an oil leak on a planting tractor. I apologize for forgetting some. Thanks for the picture Kasey.

When a seed year ends in bang like this one it's hard to know how to prepare. Will folks finish? Will they need shorter season varieties? How high will folks push the soybean population due to lateness? Well we started running out of soybean seed around Friday afternoon. Thanks to others like Landon and Alex who run seed operations for Key Coop for stock transferring seed to our dealership. What's the point this morning? Yes, a lot of work was accomplished. But it was people and relationships that were important this week. Time to get ready for church. See you next week.