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Green Acres Guy

Posted 11/3/2024 15:41 (#10950570)
Subject: Fall roundup, covers, yields, crops.

Latimer, Iowa (north central)

Overall was a nice fall here for harvest. No rain and crops came off fast. We still have 15,000 ton or so of manure and shells to spread and finishing up seeding cereal rye cover crops. Getting some nice rain so posting some pics. Yields were about 10% less than APH. Just too wet early and too dry late. As always, posting to get questions and ideas as its the best way to learn.

1st pic. Yield map from a typical soybean field. This is high quality dirt but needs to be tiled, just hard to overcome ponds and wet ground. Upper right of field has more tile and natural grade. thinking about doing some extensive surface drain work to get rid of the multiple little ponds.

2nd pic. A typical corn field yield map. Water runs across bottom left. If you look at the area to upper left from the windmill you can see a red strip going up from the turbine. When I sidedressed 32% on June 2nd it was too wet here so i skipped a round and a half. The 60 units of N sidedressed as 32% was good for 75-80 bushels per acre this year.

3rd pic. winter wheat, radish and turnip cover crop. Flown on Sept 2nd with a plane on soybeans. Hauled 2400 gallons hog manure after bean harvest on about Oct 1st. You can see the darker green above the coulter strips. Vertical till injectors, minimum disturbance I can find and do a much better job getting manure in the ground then the old double disk injectors.

4th. Hybrid rye seeded on Aug 25 th. field was oats harvested July 13th. its along I-35 at about milepost 167 on west side. Hopefully will be harvested for seed next summer

5th. Pile of eggshells. Our fields are not calling for lime besides a few spots, I actually havn't spread any lime in 7 years. We ran onto several 1000 tons of ground eggshells though so I am spreading 1.5 tons per acre on stuff going to oats, as well as test strips going into corn and beans. No idea if will do the ground good but I have heard shells are great for ground and figure its different food for microbes and the price is right. Spreading with our Tebbe spreader and its working well.

6-7th pics. Taken today, Nov 3. sorghum sudan, radishes and turnips. Planted July 18th after oat harvest. We are grazing 1 head per acre of yearlings on this 200 acres. From past experiance i expect them to put on 3 lbs a day for 120 days just eating the covers. Speeds up our C:N cycling for next years corn. Our best corn this year by 20 bpa was on a field that was oats that cattle grazed last year. Corn will be no-tilled with manure for fertilizer, 60 units N sidedressed as 32%. Corn will be Non GMO corn (Epleys or Viking for around $120 a bag), no insecticide, no fungicide. We are seeing the same or better yields than the county with a low input cost per acre with this program. These oat acres are our most profitable acres year in year out with lower corn inputs following, better yields following, and the value of the oats and the cattle. Great for rotation and sustainability goals we have as well.

8th. Carinata crop. Oilseed crop following oats. Supposed to be a 90 day maturity. I didn't get the seed till Aug 3rd so planted to late to make much for seeds this year. We will try again next year with a few tweaks. It got 5.5 foot tall or so. Supposed to be able to be used for sustainable aviation fuel. There are seed pods forming but not mature.

9th. Harvesting our double crop soybeans following oats. I did some with the 7.5 inch air seeder, some with the 30 inch planter. air seeder was 10 bpa better. Overall field yielded 23 bpa. The oats with double crop soybeans are our 2nd most profitable acres this year (if you remember last year they yielded 3 bpa but we made some practice improvements this year and got 1 more rain). Much better profitability than corn and regular soybeans. Also better on the intangibles and for lowering our input costs for next year.

10. Just a pretty pic of the bin site.

11. The cattle right after we turned them out in mid Sept. Sorghum was over 6 foot tall.

12. The dog knows where the floor heat loops come into the floor and loves having her bed there and sleeping.

13. Picked up another air seeder, this time a 50 foot 1910/1890 to go along with our 40 foot 1910/1890. Gearing up to plant more small grains and covers faster. Pulled it home 500 miles from North Dakota with the 340.

14-15th Pics of the oat mill. We are moving forward with our "little" side project of building a partially farmer owned oat processing mill in Albert Lea MN. Taking an extreme amount of time to put it all together. Waiting on a couple permits and putting the final part of the capital stack together to move it forward. We have a great group of farmers that have invested over 5M in the project to make it a reality. Overall a 49M project and will allow us to pay a fair price for 30,000 acres of oats and affect the rotation on 90,000 acres of land. Farmers helping farmers is our biggest strength.

Edited by Green Acres Guy 11/3/2024 17:28