Mother Nature is a Blessing

Merry Halloween everyone!  It seems fitting that it’s snowing on Halloween this year after the unpredictable weather we’ve faced. This growing season has been a very challenging one, to say the least. 

In the spring, we battled several inches of rain that kept us out of the fields and stretched our planting season from April 23 to June 15, much longer than we’d prefer for optimal yield potential. 10% of our acres were unplantable and put into the prevent plant insurance program. Weed control was very challenging because fields were too wet to get in to spray or even till. Feeding the crop through the season was also a challenge due to wet conditions.

So after all of this, how in the world could Mother Nature be a blessing? Here’s why.

We grew a GREAT crop on the fields we did get planted that exceeded our expectations. Even if we were able to plant the last 10% of our acres they were already extremely compromised and our investments would’ve been a complete waste.

We were able to spend time fixing drainage tile on prevent plant acres, so hopefully next year it will be productive land again. We also planted cover crops on prevent plant acres that will feed our future crops with green fertilizer.

This fall we were fortunate enough to finish soybean harvest before the major snow event today. Corn is much more resilient when it comes to harvestability. As long as it stays standing and the snow doesn’t knock it over, we’ll be okay. Soybeans, on the other hand, drop pods very easily in rain or snow so we are resting a little bit easier tonight knowing we’re done with beans.

Farming is a challenging profession, but there are always positives and you don’t have to look too far to find them. This Halloween we were able to spend the whole day as a family, and that is an extremely rare occurrence. I’m thankful for this season, although it had its challenges and hopeful for the future.