Windbreaks & Wild Bets
Making Peace with Mother Nature's Mood Swings
Gearing Up
By early April, we’re usually used to weeks of sub-zero temperatures and get ready to hit the links in shorts when temps drift north of freezing.
Not this year. Spring all winter spoiled us.
After several false starts, these past two months have felt like Groundhog Day, but things look to shape up next week with temps forecasted to reach the sixties.
That’s right, gang. We made it through winter. Fieldwork is so close I can almost smell the fresh dirt over these bar-bee-queued ribs in my smoker.
I can’t wait.
Pert-near giddy about the whole deal.
My main weather squeeze, Nutrien Ag’s Eric Snodgrass, tells me a trough carrying warm weather is heading our way. Or maybe it was a ridge—I don't know. I need to pay more attention and brush up on my weather terminology.
Potato, pot-ah-to.
Nonetheless, It’s the most wonderful time of the year despite all the wind that comes to the northern plains in April.
With the tractors all tuned up and ready to go, I'm excited to pull some machinery from the sheds this week and work outdoors in light layers.
Bitcoin Bonanza
Crop prices are still in the toilet, but not Bitcoin. She’s up more than sixty percent in 2024; the next stop could be near the moon. I finally let bygones be bygones, got over selling it too soon in 2016, and dipped my tootsies back in the crypto pool.
Though it’s possible these words could be the seasoning on tomorrow's bologna sandwich, my gut says the most significant wave of Crypto mania is yet to come.
Keep in mind my gut washed out of college and processes way too many sweets, and I am not a financial advisor, so please do not take this as investment advice.
The servers could crash, or Johnny Government could put the kibosh on cryptocurrencies tomorrow, blowing my entire crypto mania theory to smithereens.
There are always risks to mind, but as Jim Cramer says, there’s always a bull market somewhere.
We’ll see how she goes.
CooCoo For Cocoa Puffs
Speaking of bull markets…how many of you had a 132% increase in cocoa on your 2024 bingo cards?
Word on the street is extreme weather patterns, and disease have caused raw Hershey bar materials to soar.
This is what corn and soybean charts would look like if the folks who want to outlaw fertilizers and crop protection products have their way.
Even though 2024 looks to be a throwaway year, with corn, soy, and wheat trading below production costs, I’ve yet to hear from anyone in our area searching for certified cocoa seeds.
Red River Valley Cocoa. We keep getting warm winters like this one, and it could be the next big thing.
You never know.
Make Shelter Belts Great Again
I won’t win any popularity contests for this, but can we bring shelter belts back already?
The guys saying today’s farm practices have improved enough to need no longer windbreaks are blowing smoke because last week’s dirt blizzard from Canada to Grand Forks says otherwise.
Look, I get it. Farming around tree rows with today's large farm equipment can be difficult. It's also frustrating when shelter belts hold snow in the spring longer than we'd like, and picking up branches after a windstorm is a hassle.
However, it's better than watching our precious topsoil chase the snowbirds south every time we get a dry and windy spring.
At the risk of sounding like one of those Hippy-Dippy-Tree-Huggers (HDTH), I’ll lobby for guys to sock a stick row in the ground before the rest of our fertile Red River Valley ground ends up in Tennessee.
There are even government programs that lower the cost of installing new tree rows to less than the cost of two thirty racks of Busch Light.
We’ve torn out enough windbreaks this millennium; it’s time the pendulum swung the other way.
Glad to have you! ☺️