Before we start, I’d like to give a shout-out and a very Happy Birthday to a guy who taught me a ton and put up with a lot from your humble author while I was still learning to grow up.
Thanks for always being there for my Greenstar questions and keeping me up to speed on the latest BBQ hotspots in the area.
Happy Birthday, Uncle David!
Early August Kickoff
My favorite time of the year is here. A few combines in our area are dabbling in a bit of barley and early-planted spring wheat, with yield reports being kept tightly under wraps. The most anybody has let slip thus far has been “decent.”
Usually, one can gain a bit of insight into what his crop may run after hearing the area’s early yield reports. I don’t see that being the case this season. With the lack of moisture this year, I’m not sure what to make of decent.
Most of our stuff is around what was once the Bloomer floodplain, where we didn’t get started until ten days later than most, just in time for the floodplain to morph into a desert. The early grains probably won’t yield the same as the later stuff, so knowing what is coming off today serves no purpose other than satisfying one’s sweet tooth for gossip.
For now, decent will have to do.
When the Moisture's Right, We Go All Night
I missed the lights
when the winds blew just right
we thrashed all night
til dawn’s early light
It seems like it’s been a long time since we’ve burned the midnight oil during wheat harvest. Some years, depending on how the weather pattern aligns with grain harvest, we don’t get a chance to run past dark.
Most nights, the combine won’t have it.
But occasionally, the stars align, and the temps and the breeze stay elevated so we can chew off acres well into the night.
These nights were always my favorite, even though they often coincided with the day I finished my entire lunch before the middle of the afternoon, and the only thing to drink in the cab was a piss-warm Miller Lite somebody left in there a week ago.
For somebody who’s never experienced it, this may sound like a miserable time, but there’s something romantic, something special about it I can’t put my finger on.
Even though I don’t know what it is, I know it’s the same special something that keeps us going and looking forward to next year when this one didn’t turn out so great.
It’s the thing that keeps us farming and something only a farmer can truly understand.
Soy…Good God, Ya’ll. What is it Good For?
I think about soybeans a lot. Who doesn’t, right?
The other night I was messing around with NDAWN’s handy Soybean GDD calculator tool. I’m not ashamed, even if it was a Saturday night.
For those interested, here’s a link to the site:
https://ndawn.ndsu.nodak.edu/soybean-growing-degree-days.html
That’s when m’lady got herself sucked into one of my long-winded rants explaining the intricacies of soybean maturities and why it’s always worth planting the latest maturity you can reasonably handle.
The longer maturity you put out there, the wider the door opens for big yields.
Time for a little shameless plug…
Especially when planting Legend Seeds treated with YP Pro + Seed Treatment. If we ever need to replant for any reason at all (wind, crust, frost, etc..), Legend covers the cost of replants for the grower. They’ll even throw in the treatment for that second plant for free as well.
So why not go for it? Slam those babies in as early as you can. Seems like most of the time we get an early frost, nobody’s soybeans are ready for it and get smoked anyway.
So why not go for the home run with a few of your acres? We threw in a few acres of an .07 this year, in an area that isn’t (yet) comfortable planting an .05 maturity bean.
I’m not saying to go nuts and plant the whole farm to a 1.0 when you live on the Canadian Border. Everything should be done in moderation (and, of course, your area’s crop insurance planting dates), this should be no different.
Be responsible, but like my hero comedian George Carlin said, eat some red meat, plant a few acres of a crazy-late soybean, and take a damn chance, man!
Anyhoo, I wandered a bit off course there.
My neverending lecture got her thinking when she popped the question.
Sheri, not to be confused with former Saturday Night Live star Sheri Oteri, asked aloud what we do with soybeans.
I knew it was a fair amount of things, but I’ll be honest. I didn’t know half of these. Rather sad for somebody who spends as much time thinking about them as I do.
Instead of making a long, drawn-out list of what I found, here’s a handy infographic:
How many were you able to name?
Next time you’re eating some delicious sprouts and yoghurt with your tofu lunch, consider where it came from and thank your local soybean farmer.
A Critical Update
Finally, a critical update on last week’s three-wheeler story.
No longer than ninety minutes after publishing last week’s edition of FTF, I received a call from my pops to inform me that I missed a key component to our three-wheeler’s history in the family tree.
I mentioned that the fenders did not want to stay attached because they got tangled up in a rollover in the back of Grandpa’s pickup.
It turns out, on the day of said rollover, my Pappy (Scooby-Doo, as friends and fam know him) was out riding wheelies on the gravel road when he lost control and creamed a mailbox post, twisting the back axle and slinging his Gumbified body over the handlebars and into the ditch beyond.
I told ya those damn things were dangerous.
Instead of letting anyone know what happened, Dad quietly dusted himself off, limped the twisted Honda home, and loaded the three-quarters (by design) of an ATV in Grandpa’s pickup box, thinking he’d buy time while Grandpa went out East.
Scoob awoke to the perfect alibi. That night, Grandpa and his passenger, our sweet little Honda 185, went for a wild ride, leaving my pops off the hook with his wheelie incident under wraps for over thirty years.
Ya’ll Come Back Naw…Hear?
That’s all I’ve got for this week as I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon from my sick bed, recovering from a nasty Summer Swine Flu that has kept me close to worthless for several days.
I’ll return to full strength next week and hope you join me again.
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