A Year in the Life of a Farmer: Cover crop to be planted after completing wheat harvest

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. — Chad Bell harvested his two fields of wheat and once the straw is baled he will be planting a cover crop on these acres.

“We have several different farmers involved on these acres,” said Bell, who is married to Brittany, and they are the parents of Amelia and Charlie.

“Our neighbor will come and bale the straw that they use for bedding in the wintertime for their cow-calf operation,” he said. “Another neighbor will be applying swine manure so that he has enough storage in his slurry stores to get to fall.”

Bell plans to do a little tillage to level out the field.

“I’m guessing with as much green as I see, I will probably have to spray, otherwise the cover crop won’t take,” he said.

The cover crop mix consists of several species, including German millet, pearl millet, oats, buckwheat, sunflower, forage collard, cowpea, sunn hemp and mung beans.

“The idea is I want a dual-purpose cover crop that will make a good cover crop ahead of corn next year,” Bell said. “And the other idea is to plant something that is designed for grazing in case we get some cattle or do some custom grazing.”

He has been thinking about adding cattle to his operation for a couple of years.

“We are on the ground floor of getting a plan of attack together,” he said. “We have in mind what we want to do, but cattle prices are not conducive for someone that is getting started by buying cattle, so custom grazing may be a better route for us.”

The end goal is a cow-calf operation to market grass-fed beef direct to consumers.

“People want to buy from a local farm,” Bell said. “They want to know where their food comes from and the experience as much as the beef.”

Establishing a cow herd will add another stream of income to the farm and provide more diversity to the operation.

“Plus, we plan to rotationally graze them to try to improve the soil, utilize the pasture we have and carry more animals,” Bell said.

However, the fencing situation on the home farm is troublesome, he said, adding he also needs to figure out the watering system to develop a rotational system.

“We have 2.5 miles of perimeter fence around the farm and we are looking at replacing all of it to get started because a lot of it is in pretty bad shape and not worth patching because you would not know where to stop,” he said.

Bell is considering high-tensile wire for the fence and also running it through the timber areas of the farm.

“To access that, we need some clearing to happen, so we talked to a company that clears timber for power lines,” he said. “They could get it done in two to three days, but it will be pretty pricey so we need to figure how we can be budget conscious and also accomplish what we what to do.”

All the weed spraying on the corn and soybean acres has been completed on the Bell farm, as well as the first pass of fungicide for the corn acres on July 6.

“We planned for a two-pass program this year for fungicides,” Bell said.

“We found tar spot fairly early, so we decided after last year’s disaster to execute the first pass,” he said. “We learned that tar spot is not something you can turn a blind eye to, so we decided we were going to be more prepared to pull the trigger to spray and not hesitate, especially when we had all the wet weather conditions in June.”

The Mercer County farm in northwestern Illinois has received from 10 to 11 inches of rain over the past month.

“This area has been pretty fortunate. If you go about 15 miles east toward the Cambridge area, there is a spot that got 10 inches of rain in one weekend and, for the month of June, a total of 16 inches of rain,” Bell said.

He is also seeing gray leaf spot and northern corn leaf blight in his fields.

“I have not looked at the soybeans too much yet,” he said. “But I’m guessing we’ll have an alphabet soup of diseases with how wet June was and so far in July.”

Therefore, the soybean acres will likely receive a fungicide application during the week of July 13.

“We normally spray the beans with a ground machine if the conditions allow,” Bell said. “Last year we had to use a plane to spray everything.”

The farmer plans to do some scouting to determine when to complete the second pass of fungicide on the corn acres.

“Tar spot doesn’t necessarily like the heat, so we have that going for us,” he said. “The first fungicide spray should have stopped what we had early, so now I need to scout to see what we need to do next.”

Bell has spotted a few rootworm beetles and some Japanese beetles.

“But as far as anything affecting the crops at this point, I haven’t seen much,” he said on July 8.

Pigs from Bell’s 2,400-head wean-to-finish barn are expected to begin going to market during the week of July 20.

“With the heat, the pigs have not been growing as fast, so they have been delayed seven to 10 days,” he said.

The pigs will be shipped to Smithfield Foods in Monmouth, usually two to six loads per week.

“The Biddles send the first couple of loads out to get an idea of the weight of the pigs and then adjust the schedule accordingly,” explained Bell, who has fed pigs for the Biddle family since 2017.

“This has probably been one of the healthiest groups of pigs so far,” he said. “We have not run any meds since we got through the preventative medication.”

Once all the pigs are sent to market, the facility is washed and it will be empty for about one week.

“We usually finish shipping pigs on a Sunday or Monday,” Bell said. “Then the following Monday, pigs will start coming again to fill the barn.”