Category: Challenges

Daytime Harvest has started!

We started harvest for 2024 about 17 days ago. But most of that work has been happening in the middle of the night and early morning hours. Today however marks the first harvest day in the daytime!

Swathing or cutting the crop into rows for combining is usually done at night when the air is cooler and the dew can help keep seeds on the stem.

I’m excited to get started and get this show on the road! First on the list is crimson clover. This crop looked pretty good but a late surge of disease has me questioning what it will end up like after we get the final yield numbers.

This crop in the past has been really good and it’s also been pretty awful. It’s a great rotation for us, fits in well with our dryland ground especially. But the price can fluctuate greatly as can when it gets sold and shipped (aka when we get paid for it). Some years we get a nice fall check after good movement and other years (this past 2023 crop for example) we are lucky to have a check to take in before we are harvesting another.

In a county that boasts growing over 280 or so crops it always amazes me how few options we really have and what a struggle it can be to find something that’s consistent, not super risky, low labor and can be grown with the crops and infrastructure that we have already.

So while today marks the start of our daytime harvest here in Oregon, the real story of how this year will end up for our farm; when bills are paid and checks are cashed, is many months away.

Next in our 2024 harvest line up we have grass seed (both tall fescue and perennial), green beans, radish, wheat and finally we will wrap up the year with filberts.

Things I’m glad I’m not in charge of…..

****I wrote this post about 5 days ago….woke up to some beautiful sunshine this morning, but the intent stands true; I’m still glad I’m not in charge of the weather!****

Maybe you wouldn’t know it by the title but this is a weather post. Because you see the the weather is by and large the one thing that I’m most happy to not be in charge of. I mean sure there’s other things like, I’m glad I’m not the sole person in charge of making sure my kids don’t grow up to be crazy & absolutely wild but that’s a blog for another day.

Windshield raindrops

It’s raining today here in the Willamette Valley. We have needed this rain so much. The days leading up to this weather system were hectic at best. Lots of triage of what to spray, what to fertilize, what to mow, scrape, plant, fix, put away….you get the point here. We had a lot to do.

And if I’m being honest there’s always more that could have been done, but today I woke up and heard the rain and felt grateful. I know there are plenty of folks out there who woke up not loving the raindrops, maybe a farmer or two who had a lot left on their list of things to get done (I’ve been this farmer also).

But at the end of the day that’s why I’m grateful that I’m not in charge of the weather; too much to consider, too many decisions to make, and I’ll leave all that up to the big guy upstairs.

But also….I mean….it has been a few days and it could probably go ahead and be sunny again…we do have beans to plant next week….just a thought to the guy who is in charge….but still I’m glad I’m not in charge….anyway moving right along….happy farming out there no matter the weather!!

Walking Fields

It was a chilly field walking morning, but this is an important job for our farm!

This time of year as things start to really grow and plants start to set the crop for the upcoming summer harvest, we have to take time to walk all our fields and look for issues.

“Issues” right now in this growing stage usually means weeds. We are currently spraying our final (hopefully) application of weed spray. We use chemicals that are selective so they only target weeds that we see out in the field. It’s a great way to save money for us and save on putting more chemical where it’s not needed. For example we have a few fields that have a lot of groundsel, we will add an additional weed herbicide in to manage that so it doesn’t show up as a weed in our seed tests at the final stages of getting clean crops to sell. Also hoping that it doesn’t show up again next year as a continual problem.

Our weed spray is mixed with a carrier of fertilizer and water; which in turn saves us an application across the field to get our final amount of nitrogen to feed the crop. This efficiency increase saves us time, money, and fuel. But in order to makes this all happen we do have to walk around every single field to see what is out there.

This is a nice clean area of a tall fescue field.

Our farm works alongside field men who work for companies where we buy our fertilizer and chemicals. More boots on the ground means that we have a very good chance of not missing something. And if we do our jobs well; setting ourselves up to have clean seed fields that create a valuable product for us to sell.