Fall Seeding

Just as the weather has seasons, so does farming.  Well besides the inside farm joke that "the only seasons we  know are before harvest, harvest and after harvest",  we actually do have 3 distinct farm seasons and we call them "spring work, harvest, and fall work".   And our life, both personal and business, revolves around those farm seasons.  In fact I can still remember (27 years ago) being  newly engaged to the farmer and finding out the that the only months that would not interfere with farming were November - February..... so we had a beautiful  winter wedding.   So when I say our personal lives revolve around farming, I am serious. =)

As I look out my kitchen window, all of the fields have now been harvested, the weather has turned from summer into fall and our new focus  is on getting 1/3 of our farm planted into winter wheat.   What does a typical day in the life of a farmer look like in Fall Work?  Well come along and I'll show you.

But first, here is a picture of Cody washing up Farmer Joe's combine before it gets put away for the year.



The combine is put away without it's header

Farmer Jay doing maintenance  on the seeding drill which puts down fertilizer & seed



Anhydrous ammonia truck filling the tanks on the tractor

And Farmer Joe explains......

A still shot of the "nurse truck" being filled

Each year, to aid the University of Idaho, we set aside some acreage for the wheat lab to do test plots in actual  field conditions.  Here are two staff members plotting out the areas for different wheat varieties they want to grow down at the Tammany farm.

Test plots being staked out

And finally (yea) it rained. The ground has been rock hard, so the rain was very welcome and it will make the process of seeding go much easier.

As always, thanks for stopping in, and now you get to see what a fall seeding day looks like. If you want to see what the farmwife does while the farmer is working, check out At Home on the Farm page.

Feel free to email me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com or leave a comment.  All my best, Gayle

Field Maintenance on the Farm

After the winter wheat has been seeded (if you listen closely enough I am sure you can still hear the collective sigh of relief not only from us, but other area farmers as well), we try to get as much field maintenance work done and often have to work around the Fall rains.  Sometimes we don't get very much accomplished due to the wet weather. 

Believe it or not, fields like anything else, require continued maintenance every year.  Each Fall we try to put in drain tile so excessive ground water can be carried out of the field and keep it from getting swampy. By not having these mud holes in the spring when we are trying to seed can speed up the time frame of getting the crop planted sometimes by a week or more. Timing is everything when it comes to getting the crop in the ground. 

Here are pictures and  videos of the actual process for putting in the tile.   On this particular field, it is rented ground and we are incurring the expense of putting in the tile. We own this tiler so this helps bring the cost down by not having to hire a company to do this task.  Some landlords will pay for the upgrade, some will not, so we feel incurring the cost of this project is worthwhile.  By installing tile it will improve the ground and allows for better crop yields and of course, this makes the landlord happy (so come lease renewal time, they are willing to renew the leases).




The roles of tile on the trailer



Jay & Cody unrolling the tile

Tile being laid in the ground

Tile being laid in the field, this is a labor intensive process

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