The Harvest Run

Well I realize it's been a long while since my list post, and I know I said I was going to try and update this once a month.  I'm sorry, but things were very busy this fall around our place.  Harvest seemed to drag on forever this year, which is one reason that it's been so long since my last post.  In addition to doing our normal harvest work I have also been busy with my full time job selling seed.

I said in an earlier post that I would try and include pictures from time to time showing some of our equipment, and give you a visual of what we have going on around the farm.  So here are some pictures from our harvest run this year.  There aren't quite as many as I had hoped, and they probably aren't the best of quality, but I did what I could with my trusty IPhone so here they are.

                                       Dad making dust cutting our first field of beans

                                              Getting the first field opened up

                                                 The view from the drivers seat

We use the combine to harvest our crops.  This machine has heads that attach to the front for the different crops we grow.  Our bean head in these pictures harvests 30 feet at a time.  The material is carried into the combine where the grain is separated from the plant.  The grain is the carried into a holding tank at the top of the machine which we then unload in to the trucks, or grain cart.

                                                 Our grain hauling fleet

                                                       Tractor and Grain Cart

We use the trucks to haul our grain to the local elevator which buys our grain and then re-sells it to a variety of processors like ethanol plants for fuel, companies that make soybean and corn oil as well as animal feed etc.  The grain cart sometimes serves as another truck giving us a place to dump the combine while the truck are gone to town, but most of the time we drive the tractor and cart across the field and unload the combine as we are harvesting.  I'm sorry I don't have a picture of that, but since I'm usually the one driving I can't take any pictures of that operation.  Maybe next year I will be better at snapping pictures while driving.

                                                     Opening up a field of corn

You can't see it very well in this picture, but here we are on to corn harvest.  While we are harvesting corn we pick 6 rows at a time, which is roughly 15 feet wide.  Our corn rows are spaced 30 inches apart which is a pretty standard spacing for most farms.  The satellite dish looking thing on top of the combine is the grain tank which is where the harvested grain is stored until we unload.

                                                       Training the next generation

                                             I really like riding in the combine with my daddy

As you can see we even managed to get the next generation of the Roberts family involved with this years harvest.  She was more interested in the spinner knob on the steering wheel in the tractor than what was going on.  She really liked riding the the combine because it was easy for her to fall asleep.  She only managed to stay awake for a whole 15 minutes the first time. 

This years harvest was not as good as normal because of the drought.  Our corn struggled to average 100 bushels per acre.  In a normal year we would have almost twice that much.  Our soybeans on the other hand were quite good because of the late summer rain we got.  We averaged 50 bushels per acre which is a little better than our average of 45.  The price was good which helped to off set some of the sting from low yields. 

Since we finished harvest we've been busy doing some other fall jobs.  We had lime applied to some fields that needed it, and we've been doing some tillage work to help break down the residue before next years crop.  I've also been busy pulling soil samples to send to the lab to test for soil fertility so that we can plan for how much fertilizer we need to apply next spring.
I have also been really busy with my full time job.  Fall in the seed business is the peak of the selling season.  I have been calling on customers, and confirming the orders that were placed back in the summer, and scheduling delivery of next years seed to my customers.  Yes that really happens I told you in an earlier post that we barely get one crop in the ground before we start planning for the next year, well we hardly get finished with harvest before the seed we need for next spring starts coming in.

I hope that throughout the winter I can do a better job of updating the blog and keeping everyone informed about whats happening in our little corner of the world.  I've decided to finish up all my posts from now on with a little list of the things that we will be working on over the next month or so.  Here's what we've got working for now:
Working with landlords to re-new rental agreements for next year
Finishing up what tillage work we can while the weather allows
Taking delivery of seed
Planning next springs fertility and herbicide programs
Getting equipment put away for the winter

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to answer them.  Thanks so much for reading.

Rising food prices

So I decided that even though right now is our slow time here on the farm, I should probably keep up my posts.  I just couldn't decide what to post about this time, and then it came to me today while I was mowing the yard.  I need to post about some of the things that are getting tossed around on the news about food prices going up.  Now just keep in mind that I'm not going to tell you anything that anyone reading this doesn't already know, but I'm going to lay it all out from my little corner of the world. 

It seems that every time I turn on the news lately there is more and more being said about how much grocery prices are going to rise, and I know it's all because us farmers had a bad growing season and we are going to have to use our crop insurance etc.  Well trust me none of us in agriculture like having years like this.  Our industry has actually been a bright spot in the last few years, we've had good yields (how we measure our output), and great prices.  That's meant alot of growth for the farm economy which means lots of jobs for lots of people.  So this year we've had a bad year, and yes food prices are going to rise, but from everything I read the projections are a rise of 3 to 4%.  I realize that a 3-4% increase hurts everyone, but it hurts us as farmers much more.  You see a bad crop for us means that we have to pay those higher grocery prices with less income.  So while your thinking that man this is horrible how much things are going up just imagine paying more while having your pay cut significantly.  I know your saying, but Brad you said in your last post that you had another job besides farming, and I do, but there are lots of farmers that don't.  So I know that it sucks having to spend more to feed your families just remember that we still have the cheapest most reliable food supply in the world, and there are lots of people like me working very hard to keep it that way.

OK that's enough of me on my soapbox.  A friend emailed me after my last post to point something out to me.  I said that we were usually very busy roughly 4 months out of the year.  Well I should clarify that doesn't mean that we only work those 4 months.  We have things going on all year, like right now we are starting to prep equipment for harvest, cleaning up the farmstead, mowing side ditches, scouting fields for insect and disease problems, and most importantly planning for next year.  I know your thinking man you haven't even finished this year, and your already thinking about next year.  Well the truth is we are always planning, right now I am evaluating corn hybrids to decide what we will be planting next spring.  I spend lots of time thinking about how we can improve our operation.  I always like to tell people how far we have come here on the farm.  When I took over in 2004 our average corn yield was roughly 140 bushels per acre, and in 2011 we had an average of 185 bushels per acre.  I know that doesn't sound like much, but I asked my grandpa what his yields used to be when he started, and he told me that the first crop he remembers raising way back in 1952 yielded about 80 bushels per acre.  So we've been able to raise over twice the crop using less inputs than he did.  I got this next bit of info from a facebook page that I follow called agriculture impressions.  Today's farmers can raise twice as much food as our parents did using less land, water, energy and emissions.  Just something to think about the next time someone says something about how we harm the environment in production agriculture.

Thanks for reading this long winded post, I hope that maybe I have enlightened you some how.  I'm always ready to answer any questions, and welcome any suggestions you might have for topics you'd like to know about for my future posts.  I'll try and include some pictures of our equipment and how we use it in my next post. 

Welcome to our world

The title for this first ever blog post says it all.  I'm starting this blog as a way for me to share the story of American agriculture with the world.  My idea is to just tell the story of how and why we do things the way we do here on our farm.  I am by no means calling myself the expert here, and I don't want anyone to think that what we do here is the same on every farm in the country.  This is just a fun thing for me to do, as I love talking about agriculture and farm life with anyone who is interested in listening.  Please feel free to comment about my posts, and ask all the questions you want if I don't have an answer I will certainly find one.  I just want this blog to be a way for anyone that reads it to understand a little better about where the food you eat comes from, and the people like me who are producing it.

Now that I've told you why I'm writing this blog how about a little about me, my family and our little piece of the world.  My name is Brad, and I am a 4th generation farmer.  I run the family farm with my dad John, and my wife Sarah.  We are strictly a corn and soybean farm, which includes approximately 900 acres.  We farm in Hamilton county Indiana, just north of Indianapolis, which comes with a whole set of challenges.  In addition to the farming operation I also sell seed to other farmers across the east central part of Indiana.

I'm planning to post a new blog at least once a month as the year goes on, and eventually I'll start to include some pictures of what's going on here at the farm.  Our business is a little bit seasonal, we are busy in the spring (April and May) with planting, and the again in the fall (September - November) with harvest.  The rest of the year can be kind of slow, but we seem to always have some kind of project going on.

I hope that you enjoy this blog, and learning about farm life, and our family.  Please come back and like I said feel free to comment and ask questions.