July 16 2007

July 16, 2007

Thank you for making our field day last Thursday the most successful ever. We had 225+ visitors which is the largest crowd we have ever had. I apologize if you had to wait to go on a tour or was not able to make one. We were anticipating a larger attendance than last year and in fact it was nearly double. I have had a lot of positive feedback on our speakers, the plots , and of course the lunch. We have some ideas for next year to start earlier to allow a more leisurely pace on the tours.

The crops are progressing rapidly, Winter Wheat is ripe and nearly ready to combine. I sprayed it with Round up last Monday, but the thunder that I am hearing probably means that it will be a couple more days. The Spring Wheat will not be too far behind. The soybeans are at R2, no pods yet. I will need to look for soybean aphids today, have not seen any yet. The corn just started to shoot out tassels over the the weekend. It looks like the switch grass is coming on nicely. It stayed wet just after I seeded it for about a week so there should not have been any moisture issues. Overall things are pretty good. I am not expecting any huge wheat yield. I have heard early reports of winter wheat in the 40-60 bu range. The beans finally got some color to them last week. I have heard the same thing from other farmers especially if they were planted latter in May. Our beans were planted May 23 and then of course got a bunch of rain. I think the nodules just had not kicked in yet. The corn was much the same and now the color looks good as well.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager