Episode 2: A Start to Harvest

 

Transcript

 

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of an Earful podcast about farming and country life. Zach, what you got going on?

Speaker 2: (00:10)
Well, just been busier than a one arm paper hanger. We’re right in the midst of, uh, cutting beans. We’re, uh, sitting here. It’s Wednesday, October 11th, 2023. Uh, we’re sitting here early every morning in the office. Uh, I wanted to cut a podcast this morning, um, while we’re waiting on some beans to dry out. So been busy. We’ve been cutting beans and, uh, at least on our operation, that’s, uh, that’s one of our busiest times. We got a lot of different things going on while beans are coming off, we’re, uh, well, you know, while we’ve got beans coming off, getting, uh, getting ’em unloaded up here in the grain system, we’ve got, uh, chicken litter going on. We’ve got cover crop going on, and, uh, we’ve got some false strip till going on. We’ve, uh, got our wheat planted. Um, so I mean, just been a lot going on. There’s always a lot to, a lot to keep track of, a lot of wheels turning, um, you know, while the, while the combine’s running through some beans. So it’s, uh, it’s enough to keep us all busy here.

Speaker 1: (01:16)
Yeah, I run the combine, so you guys have been pushing me along pretty good. Especially that cover crop cedar man. You’ve been flying,

Speaker 2: (01:23)
Dude, I’m telling you. I think it’s sweet. We, uh, I got everybody out there. We, um, we plant cover crop every fall. We, we cover, um, all the corn acres and most typically, um, all the bean acres too. But, um, we’ve, we started doing that with a, uh, 1790 deer planter pla some cover crops on 15 inch rows. But, uh, man, that planter has just got torn to crap. As you know, you’re out there in the fall, you’re working in a lot different ground conditions than you are in the spring planting beans with that plant.

Speaker 1: (02:00)
Yeah, yeah. We spent too many hours changing axles, seed, disk, everything. It’s like planting in concrete. That’s just not fun. So this, uh, that cover crop cedar on the haggy, man, it’s, it’s made life a lot easier. You’re not touching the ground, just kind of throwing it out there. That’s

Speaker 2: (02:17)
Oh yeah, Lord. I’m telling you, that thing is sweet. You just sit in the cab, hold the handle, flip that thing on, and once you’ve got your rate set on that thing, it is just cake. And, uh, I mean, what I fold around the other day, uh, one evening and just fool around and spread 215 acres and then, uh, went and put it back in the barn.

Speaker 1: (02:37)
Yeah, I mean, uh, anytime you can take an application out of the ground and take that wear point away, it’s always better. But did have to up the rate a little bit. What’d you, what’d you go to?

Speaker 2: (02:49)
Um, I think we’re, I think I’m shooting for 40, getting on somewhere around 41 to 42 pounds the acre. And that’s just straight, uh, rye.

Speaker 1: (03:00)
Yeah, we were running, what, 35 last year?

Speaker 2: (03:03)
Yes. Through the planter.

Speaker 1: (03:05)
So up, up five pounds just to

Speaker 2: (03:07)
Right. Just to kind of cover our bases. We still have some warm weather or warmer weather. We’re actually starting to find the cool off getting some of the heavier clothes out of the closet finally.

Speaker 1: (03:16)
Yeah. It’s not like any of it’s gonna come up anyways though, so freaking dry.

Speaker 2: (03:20)
Oh yeah. Yeah. We just get, uh, we get enough rain to be a tease. Uh, I mean, we had a little skiff of rain there, uh, a few days ago. Kicked us out of the field. Of course, cutting beans. It does not take much to kick the combine out of the field, but, uh, yeah, we just haven’t got a good rain in what, a couple months now.

Speaker 1: (03:40)
It’s been, uh, it was the first week of September we had two inches of rain and we haven’t seen a drop since and we were mighty dry when we got that two inches. So yeah, it’s, uh, it’s been a little while.

Speaker 2: (03:55)
It’s dusty

Speaker 1: (03:56)
.

Speaker 2: (03:57)
It is so dusty. It is unbelievable. You can see somebody cutting beans 10 miles away from here.

Speaker 1: (04:06)
Yeah. You think, oh my gosh, the whole world’s on fire when you got all the neighbors running. ’cause we got neighbors that run, you know, three or four combines time. You get that and a couple carts and us running. I mean, man, it’s just, yeah, it’s like a fricking tornado out here.

Speaker 2: (04:20)
Yeah, it is. Of course. You know, that dry weather, it always gets me concerned about, you know, field fires and things of that nature. But, uh, yeah, I just gotta be on your best lookout. I mean, it’d be nice to get a good rain to knock the dust down and, uh, just kind of saturate us again. ’cause I mean, lord, we can’t, we’re, we had to actually pause strip tilling. Uh, we were out a set of points in two days. Yeah. On the strip till bar’s, the shank machine. So we, we, uh, wore the points out on that thing in a couple days to the point where it would not pull itself down into the ground. Um, so we decided we ought to wait and see if we can get a little bit of a soaker and uh, get that thing back going again.

Speaker 1: (05:00)
Yeah. Yeah. It has, uh, has definitely turned dry, but, uh, Hey, at least the beans are good.

Speaker 2: (05:07)
Yeah. Beans are running good for, you know, what amount of rainfall that we’ve gotten here. We’ve just been, um, I would say unusually dry year.

Speaker 1: (05:17)
Well, I mean, if we go back to last fall, it was kinda like this. We couldn’t even get the beans or couldn’t get the wheat to come up. Uh, ’cause it was so dry. Took it almost a month to come outta the ground before we got a rain. Well then we go into this spring, get most of the beans planted in April. ’cause we didn’t get much snow last winter. Yeah, no doubt. Um, get, get a little bit of rain there the middle of May or whatever when we’re finishing up and then go into June. We don’t even know if we’re gonna be able to spray fungicide ’cause we’re wondering if the corn’s gonna die. I mean, it was dry

Speaker 2: (05:51)
Shaking in my boots this year as far as that goes. Man, it turned off so dry. But, uh, you know, we kind of bounced back from that about the time we about gave up on, uh, on some, on our, uh, fungicide applications. The rain came and, uh, we were busier this year. This was our highest acre year we’ve ever had this year. Yeah. As far as covering, uh, covering some fungicide acres,

Speaker 1: (06:14)
Whereas I think commodity prices helped with that a little bit. Of course, they’ve fallen off here in the past. Oh, I don’t know. It seems like probably the past month they’ve kind of fallen off. But when we were sitting there, you know, July timeframe, prices were awesome. Um, we’d just coming outta that dry snap, had some good rains, guys were getting into tassel, things looked even. We did, so one thing about being dry around here, there’s no wet holes. I mean, usually you’re looking at, you know, maybe 5% of your acres are underwater depending on how much tile you got. You get drowned out spots. You replant you three plant. Uh, this year we didn’t have that. Things came up. The fields are even, we got good stands. So once we started getting rain, saw that these things were gonna make ears, guys got excited, um, excited to get fungicide on there for plant health. And everybody was still nervous about Tar Spot, uh, which we’ve seen.

Speaker 2: (07:14)
Yeah. And, uh, of course we’ve been, we were out in, uh, Indianapolis. When was, when were we out there for innovation days? Was that in August?

Speaker 1: (07:24)
That was in August. That was the end of August.

Speaker 2: (07:26)
And, you know, getting there, we, you know, there’s a lot of guys come together, see had some, he had some northern, northern guys, um, coming down, you know, and they’re, they’re telling us a lot of horror stories about Tar Spot and uh, showing us some pictures of fields that had completely gone down. And I’m thinking, oh my God, if we have to start dealing with this, it is gonna be something else. It’s just the same idea as dealing with a nauseous weed or whatever. It’s just, uh, you know, I feel like it’s inevitable that, uh, you actually gotta see some pictures of it sketch. It’s sketched.

Speaker 1: (08:00)
Yeah. I mean, it’ll take a whole field down and what they say 10 days or something. You see it and then you’re, you’re screwed if the conditions are right. Right.

Speaker 2: (08:09)
So, I mean, we, we tried to make a point, make sure we’re walking fields and looking and uh, you know, just looking for it. But, uh, I mean, as we’ve gotten later, you know, after things were pretty well done for, uh, we just walked through some plots and we found, we found a few areas of it on our farm. But, uh,

Speaker 1: (08:30)
Unsprayed mind you.

Speaker 2: (08:31)
Yeah. Unsprayed. Yeah, unsprayed. Uh, but yeah, at least it came in here late enough to the point. It did not cause us any, uh, yield loss.

Speaker 1: (08:41)
Right. Yeah. I we’ve seen it the past, what, three years now?

Speaker 2: (08:44)
Yeah. It just ends up blowing ins late. And I mean, I think eventually either like the, you know, the jet stream will change in the right time of year. Somehow or another, we’re gonna end up with it. It’s just a matter of time. But, you know, luckily the past few years we’ve, we’ve, uh, ended up with it so late. It hasn’t bothered us, but we do recognize what it is now. That’s half the, that’s half the bat.

Speaker 1: (09:06)
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s an ugly one. I mean, even in the corners where you don’t quite get what the sprayer or something, or where you don’t get it kicked on in time. Uh, or then our little show plot that we actually don’t spray on purpose so that we can see disease tolerance. It’s, uh, it’s very interesting to walk in there and see what hybrids react, what hybrids, you know, don’t have it as bad. Um, I don’t want it, like it’s bad

Speaker 2: (09:33)
And no, nobody, I don’t think anybody wants it. And tar spot’s pretty accurate. I mean, for anybody who hasn’t actually seen it or touched it, it literally looks like you sprayed tar across the plant leaf. Yeah, it is crazy looking. I mean, it just, just as rough as could be. And uh, of course we haven’t seen it at its full tilt as what it could do to us. But, uh, you know, just seeing some pictures of, uh, you know, guys up northern Indiana and to Michigan, uh, kind of seems like those guys in those cooler areas are dealing with it, uh, more than what we are right now.

Speaker 1: (10:04)
Right. Yeah. I, uh, I do not envy those guys. And if you’re in those areas, we, uh, we feel sorry for you.

Speaker 2: (10:12)
We do feel sorry for you. I couldn’t imagine dealing with any cooler of temperatures and fighting disease and uh, so on. I’m sure. I’m sure. Uh, there’s a lot of thought goes into, I mean, same as here a lot. You, you’re the first step of the fight on disease is hybrid, hybrid selection, so Right. That goes for everybody, I suppose.

Speaker 1: (10:34)
Well, yeah, I, uh, I can’t talk hybrids right now yet ’cause we haven’t got into the, haven’t got the corn header hung on the combine yet, but, uh, we

Speaker 2: (10:42)
Haven’t even got it out of the barn.

Speaker 1: (10:44)
Well, that’s okay. Nobody needs to know that. , um, beans though. Um, we can talk, talk a little bit on beans. Um, agri golden zeta are what we plant mostly. And, uh, vo 31, 30 ones shown through again, I think, uh, past two years. And we’ve had these dry August, those three wands have just kind of, uh, finished early enough that they haven’t been killed by this dry weather and they were just rock stars this year.

Speaker 2: (11:15)
Yeah. It’s normally not what we would expect to see out of a short season beam like that.

Speaker 1: (11:20)
Yeah. These three nine agri golds we were just running, uh, were pretty good, but man, you go out there in the top pods, they just weren’t able to fill. And when we were walking them, I mean, they were still putting blooms on when the other ones were trying to, you know, kind of give up. And I think if we’d have had some rains then things could have been mid eighties or higher, but without the rain, it just, they just can’t finish. Uh,

Speaker 2: (11:44)
Yeah. And if those, those late August rains around here is what makes your bean crop.

Speaker 1: (11:48)
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there’s things flew out of the ground. I mean, you know, that we, we put the seed treatment to ’em.

Speaker 2: (11:54)
Oh yeah. I mean, well we don’t, we don’t hesitate when it comes to treatment or inoculant on soybeans. So I mean, we try to give, you know, try to give the bean the best chance they got to get outta the ground, get ’em outta the ground quick, get ’em outta the ground even. Right. That’s, that’s, that’s half the battle right there.

Speaker 1: (12:13)
Yeah. And planting in April. I mean, we had the opportunity that’s sketch. We had that open, had that open window. I mean, let’s, let’s throw these things in the ground when we start the 12th or 13th of April. Um,

Speaker 2: (12:26)
You get a lot of sideways looks when you, uh, you’re in there buying planter parts and, and, uh, in there at deer and there’ll be somebody asking what you’re up to while they’re just changing the oil on their tractor , you know, getting ready to hook it to the planter. We’ve already planted half the bean crop.

Speaker 1: (12:41)
Yeah. But I mean, we should have been planting corn. I was giving the neighbor, heck, I one day we were, we was, we’d killing rye. Yeah. And I said, it’s too cold to be spraying, let alone plant corn. What are you doing? He said, ah, gotta do it sometime. And by God he’s gonna have some corn. That’s some good looking stuff.

Speaker 2: (12:56)
Yeah, it was, you know, it’s one thing to talk about it now, but back, you know, when that was actually happening, it was so cold. I mean, we were, we were in what, the upper thirties, I mean, we’re out here still wearing heavy, heavy coats. I mean, it was very

Speaker 1: (13:13)
Cold. Well, yeah, I mean, we were worried that, uh, glyphosate wasn’t gonna work on the rye. I mean, it was just definitely, it was so cold. We, I don’t know. There was, there was a lot of questionable decisions made, but I think the guys that took the risks really are gonna gonna reap the benefits this year, especially on dry down and everything. Um, oh yeah. I don’t know. I, we got a lot of green plants out there still, but I think it’s because they didn’t finish right.

Speaker 2: (13:40)
Yeah. Just being so dag on dry so late. I mean, it’s, it’s really is hard to accurately represent how dry it’s, I mean, it’s just like concrete out

Speaker 1: (13:49)
There. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, I don’t know. It’s something that we don’t see all the time. We’re just laying this, uh, El Nino, which is, uh, the Nino for those of you that don’t know. So

Speaker 2: (14:02)
Now don’t take, uh, your English or your, uh, your language advice from Evan. Alright.

Speaker 1: (14:09)
Hey, I speak fluent Spanish, you know? Right. .

Speaker 2: (14:13)
Right.

Speaker 1: (14:14)
So, um, anyways, what I’ve been hearing, it’s gonna be a snowy winter though.

Speaker 2: (14:21)
Yeah. You know, it’s about this time every single year, it’s gonna be the worst winter we’ve ever had. And what have we seen at least the last three years?

Speaker 1: (14:34)
Uh,

Speaker 2: (14:36)
Barely nothing.

Speaker 1: (14:37)
.

Speaker 2: (14:37)
Yeah. One, one snow event. We get like one substantial snow past that. It seems like we end up getting some of this stupid, uh, sleet and

Speaker 1: (14:47)
Grapple.

Speaker 2: (14:48)
My favorite grappling note that down note that that is a vocabulary word of the day is grapple . So do explain what a garel is. Evan

Speaker 1: (14:59)
. Yeah. Um, it’s just the water droplet that keeps getting blowed up. It’s basically hail, it’s like small ice pellets, which if you remember on Christmas Eve last year, you ended up having three inches of grapple in your front yard that you could walk on top of.

Speaker 2: (15:16)
Yeah. And uh, you know, things are getting serious when you are accumulating grop. I don’t know if I’m using that word right, but we’re gonna roll with it. You

Speaker 1: (15:23)
Know what’s really sad is that we got from spreading cover crop to grapple and like seven minutes. I don’t know how we ended up there, but, uh, hey, it is what it is. You know what? That’s just how I kind of figured it would go.

Speaker 2: (15:37)
It’s the way she goes.

Speaker 1: (15:39)
So, um, I guess a little bit more back on task. Uh, like I said, the beans have been doing, uh, pretty good, pretty excited about that. We’ve had some treatment, um, trials out. We’re trying new soybean innoculants, um, from BW Fusion and Vioc St had good results with that, which we’ve figured we would just watching it through the growing season, the nodules just were awesome on there. Uh, so that’s exciting. Uh, we get to play a lot more with treatments now that we’ve been, uh, we’re now have our own treaters, so gives us the flexibility. We’re not just using what the co-ops using. We can, we can pick and choose what we wanna put on brand.

Speaker 2: (16:29)
There’s no rules.

Speaker 1: (16:31)
There are a few rules.

Speaker 2: (16:33)
No rules.

Speaker 1: (16:34)
Good. You can put too much liquid on a seed and they stick. It’s amazing. Uh,

Speaker 2: (16:40)
Y yeah, we, there we, we have learned, we have learned there is a threshold,

Speaker 1: (16:46)
But you gotta use stripper glitter. Stripper glitter. That is, if you’re not , if you’re not using a dry finisher on there, man, that stuff, that stuff works magic for what it is. Oh

Speaker 2: (16:56)
Lord. Just to help them beans flow. It really does. It makes a world. I, you know, we used to just getting beans straight from the co-op, it’d be like, oh yeah, it’s got it on there. We didn’t know any different. And then actually seeing with and without using some dry feer product on those beans coming outta the treater, it’s a world of difference.

Speaker 1: (17:15)
Yeah. I wish, uh, I wish we would’ve been doing this podcast about March last year. You guys could have heard some really, uh, interesting stories about how the seed treatment went. The first three or four boxes were kinda iffy, kind of iffy. But once we got onto it, man, it’s, it’s an art. It’s kind of fun to do. Really. Yeah.

Speaker 2: (17:33)
I mean it’s just like any other thing we do, we don’t particularly know what we’re doing, but we’re just doing it and, uh, it ends up shaking out and I think we got the hang of it. Um, I mean obviously we should, we have to. Right? I mean we have it so to have to figure it out. Right. Well,

Speaker 1: (17:51)
I mean really once we got onto, I mean, it’s no different than mixing a load of chemicals for it goes in a sprayer.

Speaker 2: (17:56)
No. Just like anything else, right? I mean, it’s application, right? So we’re, we’re not just, you know, instead of applying, you know, herbicide on a field, we’re just applying some treatment and soybean inoculate on some seed beans.

Speaker 1: (18:10)
Yeah. You’re just doing ounces per hundred versus ounces per acre.

Speaker 2: (18:14)
A little bit tighter parameters. Yeah, a little

Speaker 1: (18:16)
Bit tighter parameters. Yeah. We’re not using

Speaker 2: (18:18)
Quartz. Not using quartz. Although it did seem like we were using quartz that one time.

Speaker 1: (18:25)
Yeah, yeah. Some of those products that are, you know, five to seven ounces per hundred weight, you’re like, woo mama. These things are kind of soppy

Speaker 2: (18:35)
Getting a little moist.

Speaker 1: (18:37)
That’s okay. Uh, ran into that with mostly inoculates though.

Speaker 2: (18:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Guess some of your higher rated stuff,

Speaker 1: (18:45)
But once you, once you kinda learn the blend, it’s not too bad.

Speaker 2: (18:48)
Yeah, it definitely takes some fine tune and of course, um, at least in our situation, we’re not running like the top of the line, uh, treater. So there is a lot of hand figuring in that we’re not, we’re not running it off of weight displacement. We’re having to, you know, actually physically calibrate the thing and uh, anybody in application or anybody really in pharma knows what all that entails.

Speaker 1: (19:10)
But man, it makes me a little bit more comfortable that I dump it in. I know what goes on if that thing gets off, just pulling it out of a, uh, a negative weight scale. Woo. That could be an expensive mistake when you get to the end of a thousand, thousand units of beans and realize, Ooh, I was off a couple ounces of a hundred.

Speaker 2: (19:28)
Right. And you know what, also you get the confidence in knowing what is going on your beans. ’cause I mean, at the end of the day, if somebody pulls in your shop with a sea tender and I’m unloads beans on you and they’re red, you’re like, all right. They’re treated. Okay, perfect.

Speaker 1: (19:46)
Yeah. Um, yeah, I really like knowing what’s going on my beans. Um, another one since we planted early was Olivo. Yeah. I think it really performed this year. We had had great out of the ground, didn’t see hardly any sudden death could have had something to do with a little bit of the dry weather. Uh, they had good conditions to come up and everything, but, uh, planting that early, I get nervous. So put it on there and felt pretty good about, uh, you know, having that protection on there. So we’re happy

Speaker 2: (20:19)
With that. Definitely going in that early, we were dealing with a lot of cool temps. Uh, you know, and then over the past five years we’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with sticking bees in the ground early. Right. And, uh, but just going in with a treatment that early is, is key. It’s definitely key.

Speaker 1: (20:34)
Yeah. And you know, a lot of guys aren’t believers in the innoculants, but, uh, from what I’ve seen, all the tests we’ve done in the past four or five years, just we’ve done the dries, we’ve done liquid in furrow, we’ve done bladders that you’re dumping on as you put ’em in the planter and now going through the seed treatment process. I mean, all of them pay, some of ’em are better than others. I shouldn’t say all of ’em pay. There’s some of ’em that are junk. But there’s, uh, every year we’ve had one that would pay. And, uh, I think, I think going into the treatment process like we have now, I think we found a couple good ones that we’re gonna stick with. Um, use Terramax, very good product and Envi Knock st. Very good product. Probably gonna be the two we stick with. Um, and you guys can find out more information about that on the Easy custom Ag website. Don’t be afraid to go over there and take a look. If you are interested in some of these things we talk about, uh,

Speaker 2: (21:34)
Subliminal advertising.

Speaker 1: (21:36)
Yeah. Um, tar Max we don’t even sell. So , uh, that’s just a free, free plug for you guys. Uh, feel free to be a sponsor of the show if you’d like, if you’re listening. So, uh, you didn’t, but Byron Knock st one that we actually do sell, uh, works, works very well. Um, I’d shoot you straight if it didn’t work well, so, but no, um, treatment side is gonna be fun. We’re working through what we’re gonna use for next year. Right now we’re kind of gonna make our own blend. I think. Uh, used mostly Agri Shield from Agri Gold last year. Um, solid, solid package. Um, just might make our own blend this year. Wanna get our own custom color? I think that would be kinda Oh,

Speaker 2: (22:22)
That would

Speaker 1: (22:22)
Bewick kind of cool.

Speaker 2: (22:23)
Yeah. I wanna get something, just something off the wall. So when, when you get the beans in, you say, yep, these came from easy customized.

Speaker 1: (22:30)
That’s right. That is right. So, um, well it looks like the sun is coming up. We better get out there and get some fuel and these machines, or, uh, dad’s gonna roll in here and ruin the whole podcast with yelling, so we probably better get to rolling.

Speaker 2: (22:46)
Yeah, I think it’s probably about time to get things, uh, get things ready to roll for the day and, uh, we look forward to, uh, filling your guys’ ears tomorrow maybe.

Speaker 1: (22:58)
Yeah. So, uh, thanks for listening guys, and, uh, we’ll see you next time.