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[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] How is corn planting going in the area that YOU are in? Here in SE Iowa, we have barely, .... and I mean barely, ...... been out of the farm yard. On Monday the 5th and Tuesday the 6th we went like mad and managed to get 150 acres planted, but that is all we have done so far. We got rain AGAIN Tuesday evening and into Wednesday morning, so we haven't turned a wheel since. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Tassels on some of the corn around here. The same stuff that got nipped by a frost 3 weeks ago! Strange weather, indeed.
Dave please have the rain god send all that rain to me. I will take it all.
[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] We feel pretty fortunate to be in the SE corner of Iowa since a lot of the counties on the western side and especially the NW quarter of the state have had huge amounts of rain and a lot of flooding. We could bottle the water that is causing problems in the Mississippi and in the Des Moines River system and send it to you using trucks that burn 4.26 dollars per gallon diesel. I just saw a sign today with 4.26 on it. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The tractor that is my "everyday" ride burns a little over ten gallons per hour....YIKES! I fueled up yesterday morning and it took over a hundred gallons to replace what I burned on Monday and Tuesday. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] Today I spent some time installing a pair of high-intensity lamps on the front of the planter tractor, thinking that once the weather turns around we'll need to go all-out and not stop just because it's dark out there. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]
100 gals in 2 days? At around $4 /gal (assuming off-road)? Ouch. Hopefully, this gas crisis will be the convincing situation for the govt to tell the "tree-huggers" to get lost and open up drilling in Alaska and build more refineries. I still think that hydrogen fuell-cells are the long-term solution. GM is almost ready to go into production, but they need the infrastructure (gas stations converted to hydrogen stations) and is meeting resistance in doing that.
Just heard on the radio this AM on the drive in to work that the oil companies are launching a "multi-million" dollar ad campaign saying that it's not their fault that gas is sky-rocketing. Give me a break.
Normally, when a producer of anything (crops, machinery, clothing) has his raw material or other costs go up, it isn't automatically passed on to the consumer. Competitive pressure and other market forces put a damper on price increases. But if a Nigerian oil pipeline breaks down over in Africa, the price of crude immediately spikes and the gasoline jumps the next day, even though the cost of the crude to make it was paid weeks ago at lower prices. And it's amazing how ALL the oil companies raise their prices together. In any other industry, that's called price fixing and would (should) land the execs in jail. Wife and I are doing what we can by car-pooling to work 2-3 days a week. Saves me $10/day in gas every time we do it. 2 days a week x 50 weeks means $1000 savings over a year.
[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Both the oil companies and the refiners have made RECORD PROFITS since the gas prices went through the roof. Gee, do you think they're gouging the gas-buying public? The bunch from ENRON, .... the mischief continues even after some are dead and some are in jail, ..... got the government and the SEC to go along with trading oil futures like you would wheat and pork bellies, so instead of a supply-demand driven market it is a speculator-driven market. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Not even seed in the ground yet, too wet, cold. Just starting to disc and prepare. So pretty much normal.
Talked to a guy north of here. He figured $15000 an acre for seed, fertilizer, fuel etc. Last year he did not get a crop worth hardly harvesting due to drought.
Talked to another guy at the feed store. He said he could go to the casino and lose it all in 1 nite or farm and lose it all in 6 months. Sad and funny and true all in the same.
[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Grew up farming, ..... went to college for Water Supply Engineering, ..... worked in various agricultural water supply businesses and owned two different ones, ..... departed the ag world for thirteen years while I built an electrical maintenance consulting business, retired from that to an Iowa "farmette" and now I drive tractors and fix stuff for my neighbor. There is just something about stepping off the tractor into newly worked soil that is, ... well, .... the kind of thing that never leaves you. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Crop "inputs" are kind of scary right now. Fertilzer is a thousand bucks per ton and seed is sky high, it's hard to know what to do? My neighbor is just being very cautious and isn't doing anything different than what he usually does; just doing a good job of controlling costs. One of his daughters starts Notre Dame this Fall so he'll definitely need that six dollar per bushel corn, and those thirteen dollar per bushel soybeans to pay college tuition. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] I have just never been comfortable unless I'm somehow involved in growing food; either as a support business or on a tractor. In the Fall of 2006 I was in a big John Deere tractor, pulling a matched set of 525-bushel Parker gravity wagons, on a creek bottom with hardwood trees on two sides in full palette, following a combine taking grain corn "on the go". The crisp fall weather, the dried-back cornstalks, the golden kernels flowing out of the spout on that combine, a pheasant scampering for cover; I thanked God for allowing me to be a part of all that. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
Have not done much crop farming except for living off the garden 7 months out of the year. Land currently on is best at raising rocks. Your verbal pic sounds delightful. Always take time to look around and find what is good wherever you are.
Have been picking rocks for a few days and using them to fill in a washed out culvert. Now the crick makes a wonderful babbling sound that is very peaceful. Maybe put a chair out there just to remember to slow down and listen once in a while.