Fall planting season has finally arrived

no-till planting wheat into sorghum regrowth

We began planting wheat for our spring silage crop on Monday. All in all, we expect to no-till drill the seed into 90-100 acres. Half of that ground is cropland on which we grew our sorghum crop this summer. The sorghum has experienced a little over a foot worth of regrowth thanks to a warm October and late frost, but it shouldn't impede the wheat's germination or growth.  The rest of our acreage will be in hay fields, and to get a good crop establishment there we will have to delay planting until after a killing frost.

Unlike the wheat we are planting for silage, we will plant our grazing crop into a prepared seedbed for the first time in several years.  This will be a four-step process:

• We will "shallow till" by breaking the top of the ground with a disk.
• We will spread manure slurry to incorporate nutrients and organic matter.
• We will use a section-harrow to fill-in/level rough spots and smooth the ground prior to planting.
• Finally, we'll use our seed drill to plant wheat and ryegrass into the prepared ground. A homemade drag attached behind the drill will help cover the seed and finish smoothing the ground.

We'll be able to apply additional slurry once the wheat/ryegrass establishes well enough to stabilize the ground. There is a chance we can graze the herd on this land before the end of the year if we have a mild November, but we'll likely be looking at early spring before we get much benefit from it.

God bless, and y'all have a "dairy" good day!

Still in the cornfield

There are few things in this world that are non-debatable...God loves us, the sun rises in the east, and things will happen that cause your field work to run behind schedule. Monday morning I thought we would be finished planting corn on Wednesday, giving us enough of a window to begin harvesting our rye by the end of the week.

Ain't gonna happen.

From needed supplies not arriving as early as expected to a couple of mechanical problems, we were not able to begin planting until Tuesday evening. If all goes well today, though, we'll be cleaning and unhitching the planter on Friday morning. That won't give us enough time to start our rye harvest before the weekend, but by Monday we should be ready to go.

You can hear me talk about our corn planting this spring in the latest edition of the Gilmer Dairy Farm MooTube Minute:

The calm before the storm

It's a beautiful morning here on the farm! The birds are singing, heifers are lazily grazing away in their pastures, and the sunlight is making the dew on our rye fields sparkle. All is peaceful, all is calm.

But not for much longer!

We'll spend much of today furiously preparing to plant corn...servicing tractors, calibrating equipment, and even making a supply run to Columbus. If all goes well, we'll start late this afternoon the really "hammer down" on Tuesday and Wednesday. We have 80 acres of corn to plant, and planting it four rows at a time will probably take a little better than two days.

But planting corn is only part of what we intend to do this week. While some of us are in the cornfield, the rest of us will be preparing our harvesting equipment. The plan is to begin cutting rye on Wednesday so we can begin chopping it for silage on Thursday. And, of course, we'll have to take the time to milk the cows and feed all the animals each day.

So here's hoping for clear weather and no mechanical problems over the next several days!