Farmers waiting for a planting window – Successful Farming

If you’re looking to start your own farm, there are a few things you need to consider before you get started. Here are some of them:

Cattle and land

The type of farm you want to start depends on what products you want to create. This may include food, dairy or wool.

XtremeAg’s Chad Henderson continues field prep as he waits for better weather while Lee Lubbers still waiting to see the ground.

CHAD HENDERSON – MADISON, ALABAMA

Chad Henderson is part of a fifth-generation farming operation in Madison, Alabama. Henderson Farms operates over 8,000 acres of dryland and irrigated corn, dryland soybeans, wheat, and dryland and irrigated double-crop soybeans. When not farming, Chad can be found carrying on another proud family tradition as a drag racer for Henderson Racing.

Field work is keeping us busy prepping for planting. The strip freshener is running putting out liquid 28-0-0-5 on ground that had P and K strip-tilled in the fall. Now the fields are ready for the planter to come behind once the weather gives a starting window.

A red strip tilled field in Alabama on a sunny spring day

Litter is being spread. We use broiler house chicken litter. It is important to sample the litter being used, so you know exactly what you are applying. Sampling shows us if there are any additional nutrients that will need to be applied to the field.

Next time I send a blog, our wheat flag leaf spray application should be complete, and planters will be rolling.

LEE LUBBERS – GREGORY, SOUTH DAKOTA

Lee Lubbers of Gregory, South Dakota, grew up in the farming tradition, and remembers using leftover scholarship money as the down payment for his first tractor and rent for 200 acres. Today, he farms more than 17,000 acres of dryland soybeans, corn, and wheat. Lubbers says one of the most important things to him is to always be learning and challenging himself to build an operation and a legacy that the next generation can be proud of.

A brown and white dog in the shop with green semi trucks

Spring is slowly showing up. Temperatures have finally moderated, and snow keeps melting. We were so dry last year the ground couldn’t freeze. The first storm dumped 26 to 28 inches of snow and the ground never froze underneath. It’s been slowly melting from the bottom up all winter. That’s been a real lifesaver. We are recharging our soil profile and our soil is not getting washed away as it turns to spring. The snowbanks that were 10 to 15 feet in the tree belts are now mostly 3 to 5 feet. No moisture has run yet, which shows you how dry we were last year. If the ground had frozen like normal, we’d have water running everywhere, down ditches, and over roads. Luckily, that hasn’t happened so far. We got around 100 inches, more than 8 feet of snow from December to February. That’s way more than usual. I’m glad that spring is finally here after a long winter.

Our winter wheat hasn’t broken dormancy yet. With all the snow we are still waiting to see if it survived the winter. Last year we knew by mid-March how our wheat was, but this year, it’s almost the first of April and we’re still waiting to see. As the snow has been melting, we’ve had a lot of ice on our wheat.

Calving is in full swing in the region. No blizzards lately, but everyone is dealing with mud. At least that’s better than being bone dry like last fall.

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Source: agriculture.com