Planting Oats and Clover

We were late getting this crop in, caused mainly by problems getting our State permit to spread turkey litter followed by untimely rains which made it impossible to do field work. The delay, while not ideal,  is not a fatal problem. Oats do best when they can set full heads of grain before the hottest part of the summer - meaning that they need to be planted early for optimum results. That said, all 145 acres (60 ha) that we are transitioning to organic production (a 36 month process) are now planted.

One of the three fields, seen below on the right hand side of a photo I took of the monitor screen in the cab, has a lot of wet spots.

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We would like to have drain tile installed to help dry up some of the wet (showing up in the above image as white places) spots. A topographical map (below) shows that the most likely route is south, crossing the neighbors property a short distance, before ending up in a drainage ditch that passes through a small cluster of trees on the neighbors land. 

The piece we own is the western most parcel, colored in blue.

 

In the meantime, the oats will be harvested then the red clover will continue growing, overwintering and then returning next year. The clover will be mowed with the residue remaining on top of the soil, feeding microbes. There is the chance that I will try to harvest some of the clover seed in the fall of 2025. The following year, 2026, will be organic corn.

To give you some idea about the scale of this, we planted about 14,000 lbs (6300 kg) of oats and 1400  lbs (630 kg) of medium red clover on 145 acres (60 ha) over 3 days.  The average historical yield for this variety of oats is 100 bushels, or 3200 lbs, per acre (3600 kg/ha).  If all goes well, by the end of July we'll harvest about 460,000 lbs (210,000 kg) of food grade conventional oats.  I'm still trying to find a buyer for food grade oats. I can always sell them as animal feed, but the price is about half.

While these numbers are big, the reality is that we are a smallish farm, at least by the standards in the midwestern US.

Drilling Organic Spring Wheat

We have a short growing season this far north, the first of May is usually the earliest I can get into the field as the ground is just too wet and the equipment will bog down.  One way to avoid this is to plant winter wheat, which would be drilled in late summer, overwinter, and then be harvested the following summer.  My two other cash crops, corn and beans, aren't harvested until mid Oct and Nov, respectively, leaving no time to get winter wheat established in the fall, something critical to it's success.  In the meantime I'm looking for other profitable markets that would let me change this rotation.

The wheat will set the heaviest, "best" seed head, if it reaches maturity before it gets really hot in the summer. That means it needs to go in the ground the first part of May; sooner if you're further south than me. Despite the wet spring, I found a small window of three dry days that let me get it drilled May 4 and 5th. Of the 77 acres,  about six had to be "abandoned" as I didn't think I could get the drill through them without getting stuck. 

Before I could drill the wheat I made a pass with the field cultivator to kill the flushes of 1" tall weeds that had already emerged. About 3 days after planting, weather permitting, I'll run the tine weeder over everything, killing any remaining weeds in the top 1" (I drilled - on 7.5" rows - the wheat 1.5" deep). When the wheat is about 6" tall I'll go over it again with the tine weeder to try to get rid of as many weeds, mostly pigweed and lambsquarters, as possible.

 

The variety is "Bolles" bought from Albert Lea Seed, chosen because it has the best chance of meeting the organic food grade standards that will allow me to sell it for a substantially higher price.  Two years ago I made "food grade", and hope that luck continues this year. If it doesn't make the grade it'll be sold as organic animal feed.

Wheat is a necessary part of my crop rotation for a lot of reasons - soil health, weed suppression, Organic Certification requirements, and work load spread out during the growing season. Of the possible small grains (oats, barley, rye, emmer, spelt,....) it has the best markets for me.

The Loup drill monitor is ok, but it's not super accurate when seeding rates are so high (wheat is 2.1 million seeds or 150 lbs/acre. I think it would be better for something like soybeans - 162,000 seeds/acre -  though I plant my beans in 30" rows, metered by the AgLeader monitor, so I can cultivate for weeds.) I bought it because I was tired of always running short of seed, as well as hoping to avoid the constant calculation/adjustment of ground covered vs. bags used followed by a tweaking of the levers on the drill controlling the amount it puts out. My math turned out ok, of the 234 bags (11,700 lbs), I used all but 3 bags (150 lbs).

Depending on the yield, I expect there will be 2 or 3 semi-trailer loads (100,000 - 150,000 lbs) of wheat to sell this fall.

After the wheat is harvested, around August 1st, we'll drill a cover crop in.

[Why is it called a grain "drill" and "Jethro Tull" was a lot more than a Classic Rock Band.]

Start of Another Growing Season

 

Things are starting to come together: the seeds (~ 20,000 lbs) are here; the tractors have mostly been repaired; the equipment is in good shape; turkey litter is on the way.

The weather is going to be good next week, so by Thursday or Friday I hope to disc the bean stubble and then drill in the spring wheat.

Drilling Kernza - A perennial grain

This was my first time drilling Kernza and it was a challenge. 

Getting the field worked down from the previous crop (forage peas overrun with weeds) was the first hurdle.  I mowed and then disced the ground in August. The day before drilling my dad ran the field cultivator over everything to knock back any weeds that had germinated. 

 

I drilled it over two days, Sept 7 and 8th. The seed is very small, approximately 63,000 seeds/lb and I was applying it at a rate of 15 lbs/acre. My 750 grain drill has a hard time metering out seeds at that low rate, even with the half speed gears installed. I calibrated the drill by hand several times prior to planting and started drilling a conservative amount/acre, not wanting to run out of seed on the 25 acre field. This meant I had to go over the field 2.5 times to use up the available seed. It was very tedious.

 

Fast forward to today, when I went out to check on the growth. We've had a bit of rain, enough to germinate the kernza. To my eye, it looks like a poor stand, but I have no idea what a good stand of kernza should look like. We'll see how it comes back next spring. The plan is to harvest the first crop next August. 

 

I underestimated how much work it would take to put this seed into the ground. I've been a part of several conferences and presentations about the possibilities for this crop. All of them seem to gloss over the actual amount of hard work, with so many uncertainties, that is needed to produce this. 

Cover Crop After the Wheat: How Does it Look?

After combining the hard red spring wheat in mid-August we drilled in a cover crop of daikon radish, purple top turnips, winter peas, sorghum sudan, wheat, and sunflowers. In addition there were a lot of viable seeds blown out the back of the combine.

When I drilled the wheat in the spring I also underseeded it with "Frosty" berseem clover, with the idea that the clover would grow under the wheat and then take off once the wheat was harvested. The clover would be my cover crop, smothering weeds, fixing nitrogen, and be winter killed, saving tillage ahead of next years soybeans. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. We got a little bit of moisture right after the wheat and clover were drilled, enough to germinate the clover which was essentially dropped onto and then pressed into the soil. We didn't get any rain for about 3 weeks and so most of the clover died out, allowing the preexisting foxtail to take over. The wheat was drilled about 1.5" deep, into moisture, so it grew well without any more rain.

That led me to drill in a cover crop as detailed above. 

We have a lot of compaction on these particular fields. The turnip and radish in the cover crop will put down a large tap root which should help to break the hard pan up.  With the same goal in mind we hired a neighbor to disc-rip the ground about 24" deep. We're hoping that both of these things will help break up the hard pan, a problem that leads to a lot of foxtail, which likes "wet" compacted soils.

 It looks ok; while it's growing nicely, and should continue to do so well beyond the first hard frost, the stand is really uneven. I have some ideas on why that is -

The grain drill isn't meant to put in a low seeding rate through the main box without putting in half speed gears. With these gears the drive shaft turns at half its regular speed, this lets you double the width of the seed cups, allowing for better seed flow through the drill. I bought a set, used, but turns out they were for a slightly different serial number. By the time I got the right part there wasn't enough time to spend on making a tool that would let me install the gears. 

Short version - tough to put a small amount of differently sized seeds through a small slit. End result - ok. Next time will be better.

Taking out the smaller of these two gears is difficult because there is a roll pin that is driven through the gear and shaft. Trying to get a punch perpendicular to the shaft while leaving enough room to swing a hammer is a challenge. I'm going to try to use an air hammer with a 1/4" punch, that might be the way to get it done.

The more I think about it I'm pretty sure the air hammer will do the trick. It won't get worked on until next spring, something to look forward to I guess.

Report on First Year of Growing Hard Red Spring Wheat

 With all of the organic wheat delivered to Ardent Mills, in Mankato, MN, I have enough information to recap our first year growing food grade organic wheat.

One of the questions we had in early spring is where, assuming we could meet the buyer's specifications, we could sell the wheat. After making some phone calls I found several interested buyers. They all said that as a first step I needed to get the wheat harvested and in a grain bin with a fan blowing on it. Once it had dried down I sent out three pound samples to prospective buyers. I also sent a sample to Illinois Crop Improvement, who I paid to conduct "independent" tests: test weight, moisture, vomitoxin levels, protein, and falling number.

Falling Number is a basic test for wheat and flour. The falling number instrument analyzes viscosity by measuring the resistance of a flour and water paste to a falling stirrer. Falling number results are recorded as an index of enzyme activity in a wheat or flour sample and the results are expressed in time as seconds. 

A high falling number (for example, above 300 seconds) indicates minimal enzyme activity and sound quality wheat or flour. A low falling number (for example, below 250 seconds) indicates substantial enzyme activity and sprout-damaged wheat or flour.

The level of enzyme activity in wheat and flour measured by the Falling Number Test affects product quality. Yeast in bread dough, for example, requires sugars to develop properly and therefore needs some level of enzyme activity in the dough. 

Too much enzyme activity, however, means that too much sugar and too little starch are present. Since starch provides the supporting structure of bread, too much activity results in sticky dough during processing and poor texture in the finished product. 

If the falling number is too high, enzymes can be added to the flour in various ways to compensate. If the falling number is too low, enzymes cannot be removed from the flour or wheat, which results in a serious problem that makes the flour unusable.

 The numbers on the tests looked good, exceeding the minimum of 14% protein, a test weight of more than 59 lbs/bushel, less than 1 ppm (part per million) of vomitoxin, and a falling number higher than 250 seconds. Had any of the numbers been below the standard, the wheat would have been sold as animal feed, which brings a much lower price.

(Click on image to make it bigger.)

I agreed on a price with Ardent Mills based on the the sample I sent to them. We harvested the wheat on August 14-16th. After it was trucked to a bin, I ran the fan in the grain bin for about 4 weeks, drying the wheat down to 12.5%. I hired a trucker to take the three loads, a total of 160,000 lbs, or 2600 bushels, to the mill in Mankato, MN. 

After the wheat was harvested we disc-ripped the ground to break up a foxtail inducing hard pan layer, pulling up a lot of big rocks.

 

 Following that I drilled in a cover crop of radish, turnip, and winter peas. Next year the wheat ground will be in soybeans.

It was a successful first year growing wheat. I've only skimmed the surface in this recap - lots of invaluable experience that stays with me for now, as I'm unwilling to put the effort into writing it all down.

Latest News from the Farm: Rocks, Cover Crops, and Kernza

 It's been a while since I've posted, mainly as I've been busy. A couple nights I got home around 2am after a long day in the tractor with no lunch or dinner (sad face). 

Before the "real work" could start I was repairing equipment so that we could harvest wheat, followed by... harvesting wheat; after that I decided to have the ground disc-ripped to break up a hardpan layer (responsible for much of my foxtail pressure), that process dug up a lot of big rocks (one shown below) that needed to be removed. We then disced that soil down to break up most of the residue after which I drilled a cover crop of winter peas, turnips, radish, sorghum sudan, wheat, and sunflowers. 

We brought the equipment home and I've been going over it - cleaning (How to Clean a Combine!) then repairing. The drill needs an overhaul; after that corn head needs the snap rolls put on it prior to using it later this fall.... you get the idea.

(Click on any picture to make it bigger.)

One of the many things that I need to fix, and part of the reason there haven't been any recent updates to this site, is my broken phone that I use to take pics and movies for the farm site (the above were taken by my Dad). The battery on it has failed, causing the screen to pop off. I have a replacement battery though still need the specialty screwdrivers ("precision pentalobe") that I need to get inside the case. 

In crop news, the cover crop I drilled is just coming up and the corn planted this past spring looks good -  nice big ears. We're making plans to get a 27 foot diameter 11,000 bushel grain bin built to hold/dry down the wheat, oats, and Kernza, a newly developed perennial grain, that we'll be growing.

Next year we'll add about 25 acres of Kernza, (field day info here), to what we're growing. In the spring there will be peas drilled, harvested in August, with the Kernza drilled into the residue. It will stay in Kernza for the next two years. 

Carmen Fernholz, my mentor, is in the video below talking about their experience growing Kernza.

 

We're joining a Kernza co-op to market the grain. As with any new ventures, there are problems along the way.