Summer Days

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend.  I know we did!  We started off by going to the Dayton Rodeo on Friday night.  The kids loved it!  On Saturday morning Wyatt and AJ cleaned out the cattle barn while Charlotte and I went to Dayton to walk for the Cowboy 5k for Kathlynn.  It was warm, but well worth it!  Saturday afternoon and evening we went down to the Iowa State vs. UNI football game with the Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer Program.  It was a great time, I just wish I could say we had a better outcome to the game.  :(  Sunday we went to Sioux City to celebrate my annual (dad’s side) family  Christmas (yes, I said Christmas!).  Today we finished up with the Dayton Labor Day Rodeo Parade and lunch at our place with family.  I crashed this afternoon, but luckily it was with the windows WIDE open.  What a gorgeous day! 

This next week is also a big one:  Wyatt starts preschool.  Mamma is having trouble believing her little boy is THAT grown up, so say a prayer for me!  I will also finish up my last session of my Ag-Urban Leadership Initiative.  I’m so sad it is ending, but I’ve met WONDERFUL people!  I will be posting more about the program and my classmates’ projects sometime soon! 

Like always, the farm has been keeping us busy.  Our normal summer tasks include:  crop scouting, equipment repair, riding beans, spraying and I’m sure others!  However, this year (because it’s been such and ‘interesting’ year) we’ve been tiling! 

Normally, we try to put in some tile every year.  However, we have never tiled through standing crop before!  The reason we tile is to help our ground be more productive and produce greater yields.  Our soils are very heavy wet soils.  By tiling, we are able to plant earlier because the soil dries out and warms up faster.  With tiled fields we don’t have as many drowned out spots as we would without it either.  This year we can actually see where the tiled areas are in our crop fields.  We are also able to do more soil conservation practices because of the tile.  Strip tillage and no till doesn’t work well in wetter acres.  Tiling takes a lot of time but is important.  We continue to learn about installing tile with water quality in mind. 

Harvest will be here before we know it.  So the combine is out and getting all the TLC it needs before we start it up and get running out in the field.