Send Rain

So here in Central Michigan we are operating in a rain deficit for sure.  There was less than one inch in July and two inches in August, which is nearly four inches short of normal in those two months. We have some alfalfa fertilizer experiments with a couple of local dairy farms near the NCRS.  Intern Jacob had kept up with these during the summer, but he had to go back to MSU. Darn skool anyway. That meant I actually had to help with this fourth cutting.  Here was a dryland field that we harvested today.  It is very dry, with cracks in the ground.  Not a lot of hay on the ground.

 I think I showed this operation earlier with the summer crew.  But Jacob built this frame used for uniform sampling.  We use clippers to cut the ends and use what's in the frame for our sample.

 Then put it on a tarp and carry to our small scale trailer.  Tim and Phil are loading the sample.  Since I had to help and keep track or weights and samples for moisture and lab submission, I was actually pretty busy.  Well they were too, I guess. So somehow I forgot to take a picture of the scale trailer. But we really did have one.

 So compare that field with this irrigated one that we sampled last Wednesday.  This proves taht water is good.  On that day agronomist John helped Phil and me.  Thanks John.  FYI if you're not familiar with dairy hay operation: a day after cutting the alfalfa into these rows, they will merge several of these rows together and then chop it up with a forage harvester and store it in some fashion to feed to the cows.  They can use machines like those shown in the blog about the AgroExpo.

 But outside of irrigation, it's dry.  These are trees in a field behind my house and they are losing leaves already.

 And this is a dryland corn plot on Farm 7 of the NCRS. Ouch!

This was the scene over in the apple orchard last Friday.  We can irrigate it with drip hose in each row.  But where are the apples?  Well they've been harvested already.

 There are a few trees that were left for us, like these Honeycrisp apples.  Aren't they nice and red for Honeycrisp?  Well they were treated with Fase 3 for color enhancement.  And yes I picked and ate some.  Deee-licious!  FYI if not familiar with Fase 3.  It's not chemicals, but Agro nutrition that does that.

So we will keep hoping for rain.  You might have noticed what looks like rain clouds in the background of the picture today with Tim and Phil.  Well they were, but not for us.  Went around.  It's was so terrible with all of the rain that fell in Texas from the hurricane and drought up here.  Need to work on supply distribution.