Thread: OT: Yo CF

Late harvest in Minnesota. How do I know? I was sitting in one of those shacks on Lake Benton icefishing right across the highway.:D

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Originally Posted by horseshoer

Late harvest in Minnesota. How do I know? I was sitting in one of those shacks on Lake Benton icefishing right across the highway.:D

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Man, That is quite the contrast to the weather we were picking corn in. What is worse: picking in 95 degrees or 25 degrees? I have picked cotton in sub freezing temps. Not fun but you could at least get into the cab after everything thawed out. Had to back a truck up to the picker with the exhaust blowing onto the plumbing for an hour to get it to thaw. Pops runs the combine and I have been running the trucks with 0 to 45 mph air conditioning. Was fine most of the time but those 95 degree days were nothing but hot dry air with no relief. Also the law was eating up farmers down here for being overloaded. Seems most other states are very good on farmers hauling in their crops but not N.C.. We are guessing when we load our trucks out in the field and the Highway patrol is using that to their full advantage. Ain't nothing but a money making racket off of us. I understand Virginia has overload permits you can buy for 80 bucks and then your covered for a long period of time. You can load your trucks good with that. I was having to load mine 3/4 full and then cut off to avoid being overloaded. This adds more trips and burns more fuel. costing us more money than is needed. N.C. does not offer that and one ticket can run from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Tractor trailers can only be 80,000 pounds. I heard a trucker got caught with a load of 109,000 pounds of corn and got fined 7000 dollars. They cut the fine in half but that still busted his hind parts. That is outrageous for one load. The guy had been hauling mulch and was used to piling it up to get a good load. He started hauling corn and just didn't understand the weight difference. the boys tried to cut him off but He told them to keep going and they mounded him right up. I think He understands the difference now. CF

Having never lived north of Oklahoma, just curious, when were those pictures taken? Here, we got excited a few nights ago when it dropped into the 60's! and the days are still close to 90.

Originally Posted by boat49

Having never lived north of Oklahoma, just curious, when were those pictures taken? Here, we got excited a few nights ago when it dropped into the 60's! and the days are still close to 90.

Those were taken several yrs ago and it was either late Dec or Jan. What happens occasionally is you have a combination of a wet autumn & an early
lasting snow and those that weren't johnny-on-the-spot getting their harvest in or weather just did not allow for it before the snow fell are left in that shape. Alot of times you will have the wet autumn where it is just too wet to get machinery in the fields but it will freeze hard and deep enuf, without the snow, to finish harvest over frozen ground. The snow has to be little enuf that it does not cause the combine to ride over the ground so high that the headers are too elevated and fail to take in the ears of corn.

The only good part to this scenario is if it is a total snow-out and nothing can be done, ya might as well go sit in an ice shanty with a batt.-op TV, portable heater, something in a bottle to keep the blood flowing, & watch the football game and catch walleyes.:D

Or like the locals are want to do, go bar-hopping on snowmobiles. Do it at night and get blind rip roarin gassed along the way. Every year several lucky winners unwittingly drive under a barbed wire fence doing 90 mph singin
The Beer Barrel Polka. Fortunately almost everyone wears a helmet if for no other reason to keep the 9 layers of ski masks, stocking caps, and scarves
in place. This makes it easy and clean when it comes to carryin yur buddys'
decapitated head home to his wife to break the news that Jimbo had a little too much fun.

I've picked cotton with snow on the ground but nothing like that. Its pretty neat after a good snow if you have not mowed stalks yet. The snow will accumulate on the bracks and it looks like another crop sitting there waiting to be picked. Sad thing was that the "snow crop" looked a lot better than the real deal. We only had to pick beans one time when the ground was frozen. got too wet in Nov.-Jan. Ground started freezing good in Feb. By mid afternoon would have to quit because the ground would start to Thaw and you would break through. Beans held on good and still had a decent crop. Finished picking about a month before breaking land for the next spring crops. Hope bean harvest goes as well as corn harvest went. Smooth and no snow. CF

Originally Posted by crappiefarmer

I've picked cotton with snow on the ground but nothing like that. Its pretty neat after a good snow if you have not mowed stalks yet. The snow will accumulate on the bracks and it looks like another crop sitting there waiting to be picked. Sad thing was that the "snow crop" looked a lot better than the real deal. We only had to pick beans one time when the ground was frozen. got too wet in Nov.-Jan. Ground started freezing good in Feb. By mid afternoon would have to quit because the ground would start to Thaw and you would break through. Beans held on good and still had a decent crop. Finished picking about a month before breaking land for the next spring crops. Hope bean harvest goes as well as corn harvest went. Smooth and no snow. CF

One of yesterdays clients a retiree owns several farms said corn is $4/bu and was telling me futures on wheat are just plain unreal-$8 and higher.
Maybe I need to get that Oliver drill of mine tuned up and come down there help ya seed!:D

We used to be thankful to get our crop out in wet yrs when winter beat us but it was always a negative that you didnt get your land plowed in the fall.
This was in the days before chisel-plowing or no-till, we pulled 3 16" lays
and turned er under. The being turned over throughout the winter-being froze, partial thawing, refroze, etc.., not only made the soil prime to easily break up with a disk in prep for planting but also the cornstalk/leaf/vegetative matter broke down alot over winter and got worked into the ground alot better than if you were faced with Spring plowing.

Originally Posted by horseshoer

One of yesterdays clients a retiree owns several farms said corn is $4/bu and was telling me futures on wheat are just plain unreal-$8 and higher.
Maybe I need to get that Oliver drill of mine tuned up and come down there help ya seed!:D

We used to be thankful to get our crop out in wet yrs when winter beat us but it was always a negative that you didnt get your land plowed in the fall.
This was in the days before chisel-plowing or no-till, we pulled 3 16" lays
and turned er under. The being turned over throughout the winter-being froze, partial thawing, refroze, etc.., not only made the soil prime to easily break up with a disk in prep for planting but also the cornstalk/leaf/vegetative matter broke down alot over winter and got worked into the ground alot better than if you were faced with Spring plowing.

Corn is around $3.50 dec. corn. The 08 crop futures are trading up around 4 dollars. Wheat is at historical highs and seems like it will continue to run higher. soybeans are getting ready to test the 10.00 area. Naturally after I booked my crop for 8. Corn has been trading on its own but beans and wheat have been kinda supporting each other. They will all have to come close in price at some point or there will be no corn for 08 or very little. Fertilizer prices have gone so high and continue to climb that it has made $3.50 corn much like 2 dollar corn the last several years. You could get nitrogen last year for 150 bucks a ton and this coming year they are talking 500 bucks a ton. If you have to put a ton to the acre and working a thousand acres then your talking a half a million bucks in just fertilizer for corn. 3.50 don't cut it. 8 and 9 dollar wheat and 9 and 10 dollar beans will whip the crap out of $3.50 and 4 dollar corn. It will be interesting what the market does. Oh yeah, the folks that hollar about the farm payments making farmers rich, When prices are at current levels, they are double what it would take to trigger any price supports. The farm bill is worthless now with higher input cost. But they will still write articles and do news ads about how we rape the tax payer. Tickles me how they talked about corn in july being 4 dollars when it had not been 4 bucks since March. Tells you what they know.

Wheat is in the plans, doubled with beans. Don't know what to do about corn but price will have to go higher to 5 to 5.50 before we get serious about it again. I hope thew market understands that us dumb hick farmers know how to use a calculator. CF