Winter, enough already!
Since this is the first blog post for Zimmerman Farms, I'll lay down some ground work:
Steven will write most blog posts; why you might ask? Because of his (my) creative writing ability? Because of a natural way with words? Because he is ruggedly handsome? I can assure you that at lease two of those are false, I'll let you decide what two are false and which one may be true. To put it simply, I'll be doing most of the writing because I am the most technologically advanced person that has no children, so I have a little more free time than my other family members. I'll do my best to keep the blog interesting and make sure that you know what is happening on the farm. If you are a current landlord of ours, we encourage you to check back in with us from time to time to see what is going on around the farm.
So on to Winter.
The word on everyone’s mind these days is winter. When will it end? Can it get worse? When's the next Polar Vortex? Seriously…can it end already?
Winter is an interesting time on the farm because we have no livestock, so we have more down time in the winter than the rest of the year combined but there is always something to do. Right now we are trying to haul grain, but the weather has not been very favorable for that. We are hopeful that next week (2/17-2/21) will be more productive.
Some corn was put in the bins wet this year, so we’d really like to get unload it before it spoils. To add to the push to clean out the bins, a local elevator offering free deferred pricing right now.
Back to my main topic, winter. Looking back through some pictures, I realize the first snow this year was on the 12th of November, we were still doing fieldwork at that time. We have had more than enough snow and freezing temperatures this winter. We unfortunately went into winter with almost no soil moisture, so will all this snow translate into good spring planting conditions? The simple answer is no. Much of this now has been light and fluffy, and that translates into very little moisture content. The most recent snows would likely have a water to snow ratio of 20:1 so twenty inches of snow would mean one inch of water. And with the ground being frozen somewhere around twenty inches deep, we don’t expect much of this moisture to absorb into the soil. The spring thaw conditions would have to be just right, and if farming can teach you anything it’s that the weather has a lot of variations and few of them are “just right”.
The extreme cold, however, can be a good thing. With the temperatures being what they are, the corn has frozen in the bins. If we didn't have these current circumstances, the wet corn could heat up and spoil while waiting to be transported. Another way the cold has been good for us is that it kills pests. A mild winter can lead to increased survival rates of insects and weed seeds, which in turn presents challenges for the growing season. So all in all, we may not enjoy the cold as much, but the long periods of extreme cold are good for the next growing season.
Stay tuned for more Posts!
Written by Steven Zimmerman
2/15/14
