Recent showers were hit-or-miss in Boone County. On our farm, we ended up with a dusting up on the state line while up to 0.8 inches landed closer to home. As of June 1, there are cornfields tall enough for sidedressing and plenty of acres replanted from just the wrong rain at just the wrong…

Nights in the 40s are keeping crop growth at a snail’s pace, but the landscape is gradually greening up. There are plenty of rotary hoes moving around the county, and a few replants are not unheard of. I was “fortunate enough” to have armyworms move into a cornfield, so the sprayer took an e…

A lot of the corn is up, but it seems to be about the color you would expect with our temperatures in the upper 40s at night. The last of the corn is going in around our area and should have an easy start. I’m hopeful the plants will take off with the warming forecast in the last third of Ma…

The windows seem to be about three days long for planting in between showers. If your crop is in the ground, odds are you have a smile on your face. If not, it’s the typical springtime routine of checking which field is dry enough, getting the planter through it and tracking down the field. …

We finally got some heat to accelerate the drying of the clay soils around the county. Most everybody is in the field now. Some are making that first tillage pass to prepare for planting, but most are sticking corn and beans in the ground. We had both planters running Thursday and are pretty…

Some farmers are happy with their seed still in the shed, while every day a few more are putting it in the ground. Confidence is beginning to build that the 26-degree reading from Wednesday morning is going to be the last of those kinds of nasty numbers. Early last week we had 0.15 inches of…

Last week saw three good days of work followed by a beautiful inch of rain to settle the dust down. Ground conditions are perfect, other than the typical issue of being way too cold to get excited about sticking seed in the ground. The only big change I’ve seen on the farm is the amount of h…

Tractors have been heading for fields as they’ve dried down enough for some early season fieldwork. Anhydrous tanks are at a premium and last-minute wrenching is just about over. We applied anhydrous at the end of the week. Some of the neighbors must have read last week’s reports from y’all …

I don’t think there’s a dead branch left on a tree in the county. They’ve all landed in my yard or snapped over a plethora of power lines. We’ve been spared the worst of the damage, but farms up and down the road experienced varying degrees of building loss. Heavy rains, hail, straight-line …

Hello again from the northern end of the state. We were fortunate to have a mild winter with very little frost or long-term snow cover. Consequently, with the snow melt and some timely rain showers, our tiles have been running at a pretty fast clip. We were getting close to starting some spr…