Looking Back At 2015, Ahead To 2016
December 2015 Field Report
A Wet Ending to 2015
Trent Brandenburg is happy to recall the excellent spring and harvest weather and work progress during 2015. Yields were “very good”, Trent observed, just not quite up to 2014 levels. Market prices, on the other hand, weren’t good. The unusually dry fall helped corn dry in the field, thus saving drying expenses at the grain elevator.
Looking ahead to 2016 after several days of record-breaking rainfall and record flood levels in Central Illinois, Trent recalls that warm, wet winters are often followed by hot, dry summers. Trent wryly speculated that a hot, dry summer might reduce yields so much that crop insurance would provide more revenue than the grain market. Trent thinks it’s good that the ground is not frozen.
He held off applying fertilizer in the fall because of the dry soil. Thus he escaped the leaching loss of that fertilizer from the heavy rain, ponding, and flooding of the past few days.
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year from Brandenburg Farms.
More from The Field Report
Rain At Last!!
Trent Brandenburg is very happy today. March is predicted to come in like a lion, with rain every day for the first week. Central Illinois has been in extreme drought conditions for months. The northern half of Piatt County and [...]
Wild And Windy Winter Weekend
Trent Brandenburg and family endured a near miss yesterday as a tornado touched down a few miles from their home place. Tornadoes are a rare occurrence in December, but a "bomb cyclone" ripped through central Illinois yesterday. Houses were unroofed [...]
Dry Weather Speeds Harvest
Trent Brandenburg is trying to get his field work done "before it rains". Much of the area Trent farms is in "extreme drought" according to the Illinois Drought Monitor https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?IL map, which is updated every Thursday. The very dry soil [...]