March 28, 2024

From the Fields: Soaking it up now

We are soaking it all in right now. By that I mean soaking in these last moments of time with our farmer before life gets busy and the moments with him are short as harvest starts to ramp up. He was gone this week for a plot tour with his sales team at AgriGold as they worked their way through southern Indiana — Indianapolis and south — visiting plots at customers’ farms. What did he report? We’ve got big yields out there! You take big yields plus improved markets and a promising weather forecast and you get a recipe for great spirits in farm country.

Harvest slowly started this week. Mostly some early soybeans, but the yields are looking strong ranging from 58 to 87 bushel an acre. Looking forward to hearing some corn yields, but the drydown has been a slow process. The second round of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program was announced and sign-ups start next week at the Farm Service Agency. Don’t forget that your Price Loss Coverage yield update forms are due to the FSA by the end of the week. These forms require a landlord signature. Majority of my days this week have been spent in my office assisting my crop insurance customers with the completion of these forms, as well as wheat insurance applications, which are also due at the end of the month.

Knowing that harvest will be full swing soon, we spent all day Sunday getting cows moved around to the pasture they will be at until January when we bring the spring herd back to the farm in preparation for calving. This is the first time in several years that we have done “moving day,” as we like to call it, without Mason. He went home with a friend from Purdue for the weekend. Jack, 12, ran the head shoot as we worked through our group of weaned calves and got everyone tattooed. Charlie, 10, helped run the pipe and recorded tattoo numbers. Todd did the tattooing while I and his dad kept cows running through the system. It was good to see the next generation stepping up. We sorted through our group of 12 bulls, and the boys picked out their 4-H steers.

I enjoyed some time in the kitchen this weekend while Todd and the boys went to a friend’s farm in Jackson County to run a test plot of soybeans. I used the last of the tomatoes from the garden to make 7 quarts of roasted tomato soup. It was my first time with this recipe, but I’m excited to have it for cold nights during harvest when we need a quick meal of soup and grilled cheese. Along with the canning, we had our first pot of chili and made a batch of persimmon cookies. I love the changing of seasons, but I would have to say fall is my favorite.

Salem, Ind.