It is 10:45 at night and I have just had supper, so I will make this short. Seeding is progressing fairly well, with the half-way point at hand. Tomorrow we will cross the half-way mark of the 2013 seeding season after a little more than a week of seeding. This progress is impressive, but we actually were a little faster last year, so I cannot help but feel that we can do better. Tomorrow we will finish our soybeans, and the day after our peas will also be completed. If things continue at the rate they are currently progressing, by early next week we should have our canola completed as well, leaving only the remaining durum acres and our spring wheat.
If you would have asked me 3 weeks ago if I thought we would be half-done by the 22nd of May, I would have laughed. 3 weeks ago, the ground was still white! Today, unbelievably, we are wishing for rain. What we have seeded is quite dry now, and most of our crop has yet to show its face. Every day seems to be warm, dry, and windy, which we were once happy about, but are now beginning to become concerned. We did get a rain on Monday, but unfortunately the ground we have seeded basically missed it. Ironically, the only fields that did get a significant amount of rain are fields that are not seeded yet.
The wind is becoming frustrating not only because of its drying effect on the soil (and on ourselves!) but because it is seriously disrupting our spraying. Generally, you must spray a field before or immediately after you seed it to take care of weeds before your crop comes up. Weeds can have a devastating effect on the success of your crop; and for some uncompetitive crops with limited chemical options, like peas and lentils, they can literally wipe a crop out. Therefore, completing spraying pre-emergence (called “burn-off”) is vital to the success of the growing season. Very windy days keep the sprayer parked because the spray simply will be blown away before it reaches the ground. Too many days like this in a row can really disrupt our ability to stay ahead of the crops (and the weeds).
Still, we are keeping up (barely) and we may be able to more or less finish seeding within the first week of June. This would be nothing short of outstanding progress, considering the very late start. Indeed, it may have been our latest start ever, and we will be able to finish seeding at quite an average time of the year. This is, of course, assuming there are no major breakdowns and no major rain events. Hopefully we do get some rain, though, or our best efforts of getting the crop in quickly will be in vain. Waiting for that first rain is always very stressful. A lot of money has been planted in the ground, and it could all go to waste simply by missing a couple of key rains.
But enough of that worry for tonight. The goal right now is to get the crop in and get it sprayed with as few mistakes as possible. This may seem like a bit of an oxymoron, as the harder you go, the less sleep you get, and the less sleep you get, the more mistakes you make. But this is a fact of life of Prairie dryland farming.
Tomorrow we will try to post some big acres and get our soybeans planted. Wish us luck!
