Do you picture farmers in December nestled all snug in their beds while visions of springtime dance through their heads? Well…nothing could be further from the truth. We are still working on combining our grain corn crop, and despite equipment breakdowns and adverse weather we have finally made it to our very last field. The grain corn crop this year was really affected by the drought and extreme heat last summer which resulted in tiny cobs of corn creating a very low yield. However, we still need to get the job done. Here’s hoping we can finish this week! You can visit “Back In The Combine Again” to see a video of our combine working last fall in much nicer weather conditions.
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Ahhh….there’s nothing like the smell of fresh manure…said no one ever! Have a look at all the piles of it we have here at the farm and image the smell wafting through your device. Curtis is responsible for spreading our manure, and he assures me that you get used to the smell pretty quickly. We use mainly chicken manure that we gather from local farmers. We are actually a part of their nutrition management program, so it’s a win/win situation. We haul away mounds of unwanted manure from their farms and use it to replenish our soil to create optimal soil conditions for growing our potatoes next season. You can visit “The Scoop On Poop” and “Mucking About In The Manure” to see videos of this fall chore.
So why on earth is a potato farm growing soybeans? We use soybeans as part of our essential crop rotation program. Soybean plants breathe in nitrogen found in the atmosphere and release it in a usable form into the soil. This boost of nitrogen keeps our soil healthy for the next time we grow potatoes on the land. Our beans are trucked to a local grain elevator where they are exported to be turned into tofu, soy sauce, animal feed, printing ink and even biodiesel fuel. You can visit “Preparing A Seed Bed” to see how we prepare the land and plant our annual soybean crops.
 Happy Monday to all of you (if such a thing actually exists!) It’s time to move some of our soybeans to the local elevator now that the potato harvest is finished. Soybeans are one of our essential rotation crops that help keep our land optimized for growing potatoes. You can visit “Preparing A Seed Bed” to see how we prep the land for planning our soybeans.
And that’s a wrap for the potato #harvest2025! The very last potato has been moved out of the fields back to our storages at the farm just before the rain arrives. It’s nice to see so many smiling faces in some of these candid clips I captured over the potato harvest this fall. You can visit “The Faces Of Our Farm” to see another video of all of us working during the fall potato harvest.
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