First Soybean Harvest at NCRS

So the first soybean test was harvested at the NCRS Friday.  Due to the extended dry period that caused early maturity, there were a number of growers in the area starting soybean harvest.  But this year early harvest does not mean big harvest.  For soybeans, rain during the reproductive stages of late summer can mean high yields.  That's what happened in 2016 where we were very dry at the start of summer, but had lots of rain in August.  This lead to average yields in the 80 bushel range.  But not so much this year.  After a dry start we had a dry finish.  

This field has a CEC of 5 and is very sandy.  So it needs rain to do well.  You can see that the beans aren't very big.  But it was an experiment and we will see if we learned anything.  Tim sent this pic.  I don't know what the yields were.

I'm sure many of you follow the United States Drought Monitor.  If you don't, just Google "Drought Monitor" for a map showing drought severity.  In Central Michigan we recently got promoted to light brown or "Moderate Drought".  The map shows a fair amount of drought across the country. Although dry here, I feel bad for Northern Montana and their "Exceptional Drought" rating.  Must be tough to see all that hurricane rain when you have none.

So regardless of conditions, harvest will continue.  (If it's that dry in Iowa and Illinois, shouldn't corn prices be higher?)

Funny Pickles

So I read the newspaper comics.  There, I said it.  Feels good.  But you would too if you saw this one the other day.  Hilarious.  

I'm sure agronomists and chemists from all over were laughing.  (Plus people that actually paid attention in high school chemistry).  While everyone else was scratching their heads.  (FYI for texting dinosaurs: K is short for "Okay", which continues in the strip the next day.)  You can google "Pickles" and it will take you to a site called gocomics.com.  I figured I owed Mr. Crane that since I borrowed his strip.    

Potatoes Unearthed

So if you were driving by and saw this operation, you would surely think something important was going on.  Well you would be right!  It was potato harvest day at the NCRS.  It is a mult-step operation that requires the help of several of the NCRS's hard working staff.

 Renae drives the digger that lifts the potatoes out of the ground.  (FYI: that's asparagus in the background).

And up the chain they go.  These are 'Snowden' variety potatoes used for making potato chips. Michigan is one of the leading growers of chipping potatoes as well as a top producer of potato chips. One of every four bags of potato chips in the country contain Michigan-grown potatoes.  (I'm so proud). And who doesn't like potato chips?  If you answer "no", then go ahead and leave now.

Jay and Tim B collect the potatoes from the plot in the baskets.

Zouheir is the man in charge, and was seen rushing around to make sure things went right and brings the bags to collect the potatoes.  Slow down Zouheir!  Did I mention that we are experiencing extremely warm weather, and the temperature was over 90?  (Wasn't I just complaining recently about how cold it was?  Well I am always finding new things to complain about.)

Just like any plot harvest, they collect the production for weighing.  In addition, potatoes need to be graded for size which will be done later.  Larger size and uniformity are the goals.

This was a very important experiment testing some of our new products.  So Zouheir will sort out the data and let us know what happened.  This was a very nice looking plot all summer, and the preliminary yield calculations were very good.  Hopefully we will learn something here to serve as a guide for potato growers to produce even more delicious chips.

Truex Wins!

So there was a NASCAR race yesterday near Chicago.  Our favorite driver, Martin Truex, Jr in the Furniture Row car was the victor! Why is he our favorite?  Because the car owner, Barney Visser, farms many thousands of acres of dryland near Denver and uses AgroLiquid on all of it. Plus he's a nice guy who has visited the NCRS.

I've mentioned this in the past.  But they are having a good year racing as Martin Truex was the points leader coming into the racing Playoffs, and now has a bigger lead with the victory.

 Happy Martin takes a victory lap with the checkered flag.

 At first I thought my TV color was a little off and he was getting doused with Pro-Germinator in victory lane.  But it turns out the race sponsor is Nickelodeon, and was called the Turtles 400.  I didn't understand that at first, but it was for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is a show on that network.  And slime is part of Nickelodeon somehow.  But congratulations to all.

Well this victory should give them enough money to up their AgroLiquid order for next year.  Who wouldn't do that?

Last NCRS Alfalfa Plot Harvest for 2017

So last Thursday we took the fourth harvest of our alfalfa plots.   These are short plots where there are evaluations of several AgroLiquid treatments, some dry treatments and a combination, all replicated for scientific methodology of course. For this type of harvest we use a leaf flail mower gatherer.  It cuts and blows the alfalfa up into the machine.  It works pretty well.  Here Phil cuts one of the plots.  He goes up and back for the plot sample.  

 Jeff spreads a tarp to collect the cut alfalfa.

 Dump it on the tarp....

 ...and put it up on the scale to get the weight.  We also collect two sub-samples: one for % moisture/dry matter determination, and another to send to a lab for quality analysis.  It was a nice day and went pretty quick.

Here is the aftermath.  Earlier in the year, Zouheir would would do something new.  He would collect alfalfa from the uncut middle section and extract alfalfa sap for analysis to see if this could be a useful analysis tool for measurement of nutrient content. Haven't seen the summary yet.

Well I have a summer's worth of harvest and lab data to summarize.  Better get busy.  We have employed several different plot methods for alfalfa over the many years of the NCRS.  This method works pretty well and doesn't take up a lot of room.  Years ago we had large plots and weighed small bales.  Not doing that again.  We have also made large round bales and weighed them on this same trailer scale.  That wasn't bad, but had to make arrangements for the bales.  One year we used a university method of randomly throwing a hula hoop in a plot and clipping the alfalfa inside the hoop.  This was repeated several times per plot.  Well I thought that was too small of an area and took too long to hand cut all the alfalfa.  And the workers would keep playing hula hoop, so that was no good.  But the leaf sucker method is quick since you just cut and weigh.  This is the last year for this alfalfa field as it is pretty old now.  We have a new field planted nearby that will have our plots for next year. So place your vote for leaf sucker or round bales.  Hula hoop votes will not be counted.

All Hands on Deck. Navy Bean Harvest!

So what's the first crop taken for fall harvest (even though it's not fall)?  That's right, Navy Beans. Why are they called Navy Beans?  I looked it up and the answer is obvious.  Back in the sea faring days of sailing ships and months at sea, these white beans could be loaded into casks and stored for a long time.  So boat...sailors....Navy beans!  How nutritious.  So the experiment on Farm 7 was ready for harvest.  Last year we harvested here on September 26.  Of course it is documented in the blog.  Really, check it out.  Why so early this year?  Well lack of rain resulted in smaller plants that finished earlier.  Smaller plants close to the ground can be a challenge to direct harvest.  Time was they were pulled, wind-rowed and then combined.  Even with direct harvest beans, they can be tough to feed into the combine.  But the wind reel that we have helps blow them in, so it went well.  Except for the low yields from drought.

As has been seen so many times in harvest blogs, the weigh wagon follows the combine and catches the beans for each 265 foot long plot.  Stephanie had the honor of riding in weigh wagon grain cart and took these pictures.

I showed up later in the afternoon to confirm that it was indeed harvested.  It was.

So in a few weeks it will be soybean harvest....and corn harvest while still making time to plant wheat.  Look for these results in the research report.

Magic Blog

So the blog from yesterday was titled "Send Rain" and talked about how dry it is around here.  Well evidently it delivered as it rained today.  Thank you Magic Blog. Although it was only around a quarter inch, anything is appreciated.  Maybe I should title this one "Send A Million $".  Like the rain, even a quarter of that would be nice.  But I'll stick to my mission here and be thankful for any rain.  Here is a view this afternoon off the back outside balcony of the St. Johns office.

I received this from my daughter and former NCRS summer employee Dana. No doubt you've heard about the terrible fires in the Northwestern US.  Over a million acres burned in Montana!  She lives near Missoula which is in Western Montana, and has sent pictures of smoke-filled skies blocking the sun.  Major fires are not far away and she has her evacuation bag ready for her and dog.  Resources are stretched to breaking point and the major defense appears to be to wait for snow.  Too many disasters going on now with fires and hurricanes.  Pray for all the people.

 And since we are on a weather theme, here is a look at my oh-so-accurate Ford Flex thermometer from yesterday morning.  37 degrees on September 6 is too cold no matter where you are.  You may recall that we have a record holder employee at the NCRS for the state's biggest watermelon in state contests, Tim Brussel.  He said that he has been covering his giant watermelons and pumpkins with blankets and feeding them warm air from a heater at night.  Floods, fire, cold....challenges abound.

But we forge ahead like any farmer would.

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.