A Year in the Life of a Farmer: Corn, soybean planting begins in Mercer County

AgriNews will follow Chad Bell throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmer and the decisions he makes on his farm.

VIOLA, Ill. — Planting corn and soybeans on Bell Family Farms has started for the 2026 growing season.

“We started planting beans on April 21, and if I am going to pick a week to get started, this would be it,” said Chad Bell, who is married to Brittany, and they are the parents of Amelia, 12, and Charlie, 9.

Looking back at his Facebook memories, Bell said, there were three to four years in a row that he started planting on April 21.

“So, right around April 20 is when we start,” he said. “I saw one planter going on Monday and heard of another one, so people are definitely going this week.”

The farmer in Mercer County in northwestern Illinois has two 16-row planters, one dedicated to each crop. The Kinze planter has two sets of row units to plant 15-inch soybeans, and the White planter is used to plant 30-inch corn rows.

“We took the planter out Monday with no seed to set the closing wheels, row cleaners and to check out some of the work we did over the winter to make sure it is good,” Bell said.

“The planter has lots of electronics and hydraulics, so making sure all of the technology is working is probably the biggest issue every year,” he said. “You can hardly plant without it all working. It is not like the ground-driven planter with chains where you find the broken chain, put a new chain on and keep going.”

Bell’s dad, Greg, operates the soybean planter.

“This 120-acre field or the one around my hog building is almost always the field we start with because it is our best ground,” the farmer said. “It is better drained, has better soil types and is more productive.”

With his second planter, Bell planted corn in the 35-acre adjacent field.

“This field was wheat last summer and we baled the straw, put hog manure on it and seeded a cover crop of oats, radish and berseem clover,” he said. “That all winter killed, so this is volunteer wheat growing now.”

This is not Bell’s typical scenario for planting corn. Most of his acres are strip-tilled.

“It will be a couple of weeks before the corn emerges, so I will have some time to kill the wheat,” he said. “The wheat doesn’t bother me at this stage, but if it was knee high, then I would need to adjust my management plan.”

Bell looks forward to planting season. However, it is also a nerve-racking time.

“I want to plant one time and I want it to be the best time,” he said. “I want to make sure everything is ready when I go to the field so I don’t have to wrench on things in the field because of something I should have done before planting.”

The goal, Bell said, is to do everything in his control to do his best job of planting.

“It almost seems like the older I get the more I realize I don’t know,” he said. “You think you have things figured out and then you learn something that changes what you thought you knew.”

Every year is a learning experience and hopefully every year builds on the previous year, Bell said.

“I try not to make the same mistake twice,” he said.

For about the last 15 years, Bell has split applied nitrogen for his crops.

“That is not changing, but I am looking at the application timing of other nutrients such as potassium and learning more about the interaction with soil, fertility and microbes,” he said.

Bell is focusing on learning more about how nutrients interact with one another in the soil.

“You think it is nice you have high phosphorus levels, but maybe that is tying up the zinc,” he said. “So, maybe I need more zinc to offset the high phosphorus levels.”

This year, the farmer will be doing some trials on his farm with zinc and boron.

“I’m using more sulfur than I have in the past,” he said. “And I am looking more in depth at my soil tests, my report card, to see if I need to improve on some things.”

Preparing for planting and starting to plant crops have been a little more challenging for Bell this year after an injury that occurred on April 3.

“My son and I were loading overstock pigs and one of the pigs got by,” he recalled. “So, instead of walking after it, I decided to run which I had done before and it ended well.”

“But this time I think the pig stopped and I kept going and I tripped over it or my panel,” he said. “I’m not sure because it happened pretty fast.”

As a result, Bell has a cracked kneecap and will be wearing a leg brace for potentially six weeks.

“It was hard to do the planter work that I had left to do,” he noted.

Hunter Timerman helped Bell finish the planter preparation work and is assisting with planting crops.

“He has worked for me probably three years and has been around the operation enough that he has a good idea of what we do,” Bell said.

“I let all the air out of the seat in my tractor, so I’m not hanging my leg so much,” he said. “But I may have to take some breaks if I’m in the tractor all day.”

Timerman has also handled pig chores for the past couple of weeks.

“And I have been doing the chores on the weekends,” Bell said.

“Pigs are doing good. They are now at 60 to 70 pounds,” he said. “Health has been good and hopefully we have more stable weather so their health should stay good unless we have some up and down weather yet to come, which can cause some health issues.”