Waiting For It To Quit Raining
Machinery Ready for Spring Planting
Trent Brandenburg has his machinery ready to roll. “It’s all pointed in the right direction. I’m just waiting for it to quit raining so I can drive it out of the machine shed.” Trent wonders if he will have another wet spring like last year. He is more concerned with the national virus panic than with the markets, even though corn and soybeans are at contract lows on this, the first day of spring. “We’ll get through it,” he said, with the farmer’s eternal spring optimism.
A week of steady, and at times, heavy, rainfall has thoroughly saturated the soil. A quick warm-up would help dry the cultivation zone enough to plant, but warm days have been rare this month in central Illinois. Temperatures in the 60s would be great if they weren’t accompanied by steady rain. Trent’s up-to-date equipment lets him make maximum use of every “planting window”, which fuels his optimism.
More from The Field Report
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 [...]
In a Drought, but Corn is Too Wet to Harvest
The current Illinois drought map (11 September) shows severe drought in the northern 40% of Piatt County and moderate drought in the rest of Piatt and adjacent areas of neighboring counties. Trent Brandenburg has barely started harvesting because his corn [...]