After dealing with an unusually wet crop season, southeast farmers that were able to seed are now finishing their harvest operations. Farmers are now taking advantage of the warm fall weather to prepare their fields for the next crop season, as they plan ahead for 2012.
"For the most part, it will be business like usual for next year's crop season," said Brad Eggum. "We have to assume normal seeding conditions, but most fields are in fallow conditions that might change things and open up crop rotation for farmers. Everyone is working hard to get their fields back into workable condition for next year, and are using every kind of method to get rid of the weeds."
"My actions are supporting my optimistic thoughts. We have implemented tillage on 40 per cent of our acres, and the bulk of it was handled using a vertical tool," said Marcel Van Staveren. "We are also applying nitrogen fertilizer now and are actively going with two units." Van Staveren noted that like many farmers in the area he is using last year's fertilizer product and is at an advantage with soaring input prices.
Actively applying fertilizer with two units, Van Staveren is also taking advantage of warm October weather to make his fields more efficient for the 2012 crop year.
Farmers are tillaging with tandem discs of their wet acres to dry out the soggy soil.. "They are also working on knocking down the old growth of weeds, which are still a problem, and getting rid of the winter annuals that are starting to show up," he said.
Because of the warm October weather, farmers are able to get sprayers out into their fields to handle the winter annual situation. "The warm and dry weather is letting us do what we want to do," said Eggum.
"We intend on applying granual herbicide on the winter annuals, and this will become active next spring and will help the battle against weeds for next year," said Van Staveren.
That dry weather also assisted in drying out a lot of low areas on his land, but Van Staveren noted that other farmers still deal with water issues on their land. "Things have improved a lot since June, and we are hoping that October stays the course to improve our chances for next year's crop season."
"A lot of these wet areas are staying wet going into freeze-up, and it will make it difficult to access those areas come spring," Van Staveren added.
The ideal winter for southeast farmers would be a "textbook world, where we receive six inches for cover of the winter wheat," said Van Staveren.
Eggum planted winter wheat himself this year, which he noted was a change for his normal operations, and noted a lot of fall rye and winter wheat being planted in his area.
"We are going to have a lot more lick capacity in the soil, and it will help absorb the snow moisture," said Eggum. Comparing this fall to last year, he noted, "We had such a wet fall last year that we knew whatever was coming in the spring had to run. We can't forget that generally in the long-term we are a dry area, and we had just enough moisture this fall that I feel we will be in decent shape."
