Wheat Watch Part III

I took this picture today. As you can see there is some brown t the bottom of the wheat.  This is caused by a lack of moisture.  We are hoping to get some rain soon!

-Farmer Ryan

Wheat Watch Part II

One week of growth later:

The long view:

-Farmer Ryan

Wheat Watch

Farmers spend a lot of time walking their fields and monitoring the growth of their wheat as well as checking for weeds and other pests.  Below is something that a farmer would be looking for when they were checking their fields.  In the middle of the picture is a mustard weed and in the bottom left hand corner there is a weed called cheat grass.  Weeds steal a lot of the sunlight, moisture and nutrients away from the crop that is being grown.  The earlier the weeds are detected and killed the higher the crop yield potential.

Since I've been here about 6 weeks the wheat has grown like crazy.  I took some pictures few weeks ago of the outside of an irrigated wheat field.  My plan is to take some more pictures and post them as the season progresses.

This is a close up view of the wheat:

This is the wheat at a distance:

Farmers don't just spend their time out in the fields, they also spend it watching commodity prices.  Obviously this is important to the farmer because these commodity prices are going to determine the profit, or loss, of their growing season.  Futures markets can also be used by the farmer to lock in prices on their crops before the crops have even been planted.  I plan on doing a post about forward contracting, hedging, and the futures market in general but in the mean time you can view the price of hard red winter wheat at the following website: Frontier Ag

The symbol that we mainly look at is KW2N on the Kansas City Board of Trade.  KW2N is Hard Red Winter Wheat for that will be harvested around July 2012

KC Wheat (KCBT)
Contract	Sym	Prev	Open	High	Low	Last	Chg	Close
HARD RED WIN... May 12	KW2K	635'2	640'4	647'0	633'0	633'0s	-2'2	633'0
HARD RED WIN... Jul 12	KW2N	645'0	653'4	657'0	642'4	642'4s	-2'4	642'4

-Farmer Ryan

My First Weld

Today I welded something for the first time on the farm.  When you watch TV shows on discovery channel and you see people welding it looks like it would be easy.  It. Is. Not.  I filled in some holes in my pickup tool box (Future post coming soon) with a MIG welder.  These welders are also called "wire welders" using one is kind of like painting with a pistol grip and metal.

 

 - Welder Ryan

RAIN!

All you Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri folks have been getting a lot of rain lately, but out west we haven't had much at all.  In the past three days however we received about 1.25" of rain.  Because it has been so dry this is much needed moisture and its just in time for us to plant our corn.

Fun Fact:  Every inch of rain that gets absorbed into the soil there is 6 inches of moisture built up in the soil below the surface.

-Farmer Ryan

Water for the Heifers

One of my new jobs on the farm is taking water to our heifers.  They actually have two sources of water; a tank that has a water pipe run to it and three small plastic tanks that are about a couple of miles away.  Since the automatic tank would be such a long walk from the good pasture we haul water to the heifers everyday. 

It is important to not force your cattle to walk to far as this will make them burn off all the good feed they are consuming.  Bigger heifers are worth more than smaller ones.  Think of it like the reverse of every diet book you've ever read...

The heifers are a little scared of people still and they stand as far away from the water truck as they can.  Unless they think they can sneak a drink.

After you fill the tanks you have a whole herd of happy customers:

-Rancher Ryan