Too wet to plow, Mr. Cow?

There is a Steiger 4WD tractor with a large disc behind it waiting for drier weather to continue what was started last Friday in the field across the road from my house. It was only a half-inch on Saturday that messed things up. We added about 3/10ths today, but it was a drizzle all day long. However, I have some work for them to do with a Bobcat and a tractor with front-end loader cleaning up dozed piles of tree rows and brush that have been partly burned. That can get started a day or two sooner than going back to tillage for the wheat to be planted yet. We still have some cattle that need to be moved out of one pasture, so will try to do that tomorrow unless it is raining at the time. Oh, yeah. We have about a dozen survey jobs to get done, too.

I have a couple fields of late soybeans that may get some benefit from the showers, however, so I shouldn't be too negative. Typical farm situation. You want the rain in certain fields and no rain in the rest of them.

Too wet to plow near OKC

See that your area is getting whacked as well. You may want to reschedule your planned afternoon of pasture pool.

Just out of insatiable curiosity, do y'all farm to supplement your income, or grow your own food or both?
My agricultural expertise consists of growing tomato's in five gallon Home Depot buckets, and even that is hit or miss.

Have a great week! B-)

This is diversified farm country

It's the culture we live in that keeps us connected to the land. Other than enjoying some persimmons, pears and apples, you won't find me harvesting my own food off my own land. Shoot, we haven't even hauled anything to a local slaughterhouse in years to store as our own meat source. Everyone knows food magically appears in supermarkets and we go there to get it.

Farming either gets in your blood or it doesn't. I grew up farming. During my college years you would find me on weekends doing farm work and related chores as a major source of my ability to pay my own way and that of my wife and, for the last 15 months, that of my daughter.

After a lapse of about six years, other than occasional days of helping my father, I decided to re-enter agriculture a little at a time. It started with one calf. Grew to about 30 head of cattle. Then I jumped in hardcore and rented some land on a deal that was too good to be true thanks to the FDIC (long story). Started buying old equipment at a time the farm industry was in a tremendous hurt and the prices were very low. Banks were foreclosing on those who had gambled poorly. Then the banks began to fail as well. The forty acres I purchased in 1983 would bring five times what I paid for it then. Another farm I purchased in 1987 would sell for about ten times what I paid for it then. As the value of my collateral grew, so did my ability to finance everything in life, cars, trucks, equipment, survey equipment, computers, you name it. It wasn't so much any net income, it was that increase in collateral value that has allowed me to do what I've been doing on my own surveying since 1987.

This is diversified farm country

What I mean by diversified farm country is that most farmers in this region have a wide variety of income potentials. Corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, milo/maize/sorghum, alfalfa, red clover, sweet clover, native hay, tame hay of several varieties, fescue seed, cattle, swine, sheep, goats, exotics of various sorts, dairy cattle and even cotton can be found. What you gain when the cattle market goes up is lost by the grain market going down, or vice versa. But, there are multiple choices on what you attempt to produce over the year. In the cattle market for example there are those who focus on the cow/calf type of operation, others focus on buying young calves and taking them to around 700 pounds or so when they are the most attractive to the feed lots, and yet others only work with the feeder cattle. Some have a mix of all three goals.

In some other parts of the country monoculture, or almost monoculture, exists due to environmental and natural resource constraints. Some ground is only useful for livestock grazing, for example. Here, we may plant corn, harvest it, turn cattle in on the stalks, seed in a winter cover crop that can also be enjoyed by the cattle while they are munching on the corn stalks, plow under the green manure crop in the spring and plant the next year's corn crop. That simply cannot be done in some areas of the country.

Another big plus here with the diversification possibilities is the opportunity for the weekend and evening farmers. Like me, they juggle their "regular" employment with farm-related investments and responsibilities. These people have no concept of a 40-hour week. If you are doing what you enjoy, it isn't work.

This is diversified farm country

Thanks. It’s always interesting to learn about surveyor’s lifestyles in different parts of the country. You’d be a regular “Crocodile Dundee” down here in “Nut World”.

Have a great week! B-)

This is diversified farm country

Mr. Cow,

It's uplifting to see people are living their dreams and the family farm has not completly given out to industrial farming. That connection to the land of which you speak is something I think a lot of people have lost. I've a deep respect for people that work with the land. May the rains bless the right fields and spare the wrong. I sometimes wonder why I even bother to plant a vegtable garden every year. It's not like I need to. Guess it's just in my DNA and it gives me pleasure. What more reason do you need?

Cheers! Willy out.

This is diversified farm country

Sounds like you are doing OK with it. I know the Steiger tractors quite well. My first wife's Dad (Big Ted) had 2 of them. A Tiger and a Panther - both with duelies all around. Fun to drive. They had kinds of other cool stuff to drive. Everything from the small Bobcat to that big beast of a harvester. He had several hundred acres of his own plus farmed his Dad's property plus leased about another 1000 from someone else. He had one of the biggest operations around at the time. I worked for them off and on for years. Bailing hay on weekends was me and the 2 brothers. That was mostly just for fun and beer money. I liked doing farm work. It would probably kill me nowadays. We were all built like brick excrement-houses.

During my summer trip back to IL I was shocked at the current rate of farmland. No way anyone could get into it from scratch without some major capital investment and/or backing - nevermind buying equipment.

Enjoy!!
E.

This is diversified farm country

I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of farming is that a lot of folks think you can just get in or get out whenever you want. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes so much investment of time and money, over a long period of time, to get into it at any sort of scale, that it's impossible to do that. A single crop, starting with planning and ending with marketing, can take over a year. Livestock even longer. I work full time and row crop (corn, soybeans, and wheat, and planning to start up a hay business next year)a little over 400 acres, which makes me a small timer in this area, but I do it all pretty much by myself. I grew up on the farm, live on it, and I'll probably be buried on it. I guess it gets in the blood.

It ain't ever too wet to plow,

but sometimes you need a bigger tractor and a smaller disc. 🙂

Another variation is that it never rains in the oil patch, but some days are wetter than others. 🙂

It ain't ever too wet to plow,

That can be true in places like West Texas, the Oklahoma Panhandle and part of Eastern Colorado. Anywhere that legend holds that it is closer to a source of water by going cross-country than it is to drill down to find it.