Machinery and Tile Repairs While Awaiting Warmer Weather
Trent Brandenburg is enjoying the first day of Spring finishing up some machinery repairs. His fieldwork right now involves fixing broken field tiles and clearing waterways to ensure good drainage during the crop year. Trent has not started serious field work to begin planting yet. “It’s too cold,” he said. He wants a warmer soil temperature in order to get quick germination when he sows his corn and soybean seed.
Trent does not plan any changes in his planting or in his crop protection investment this year. Despite farm publications observing
cutbacks in crop protection chemical purchases, Trent does not plan any cuts. “You shoot yourself in the foot,” he said. “You gotta have a crop to sell,” even when the market price is low.
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 [...]