After seeing no showers amounting to anything, the scurs have set their sights on getting this week right. Will they predict any rain? Starting Wednesday, mostly sunny with a slight chance of a shower. Highs of 75 – 80 and lows of 45. Thursday, much cooler with a slight chance of a shower in the forenoon. Highs of 55 and lows around 35. Partly cloudy and cooler on Friday with high temps of only 50 and lows falling to 30. Saturday and Sunday, mostly clear with highs of 50 – 55 and lows of 30. Slightly warmer on Monday and Tuesday with a slight chance of showers. Highs of 55- 60 and lows of 35. The normal high for October 8th is 66 and the normal low is 40. The scurs will be making hobo stew down by the rusty railroad tracks on Columbus Day.
The Harvest Moon lived up to its billing with the brightness allowing one to walk around without a flashlight outside just about anywhere you wanted. And farmers were hard at it. The warm temperatures and dry conditions have meant farmers can harvest at will for the most part. One can get too much of a good thing, however. With corn as dry as it is, there has become more loss at the head when ears strike the stripper plates and butt kernels go flying. Soybeans haven’t been immune to the overly dry conditions, either. In addition to being 7% - 8% moisture, some pods are popping open easily sometimes before the combine even gets there, to say nothing of sickle shatter when it does. Not unusual to find 5 – 6 bu./acre on the ground in places on recently harvested fields. Another week though should bring us pretty close to the end of harvest and it’ll only be the 8th of October. That means there will suddenly be a lot of free time on some people’s hands. Hopefully that doesn’t include a lot of recreational tillage on fields that have already been tilled. The soils are extremely dry and have worked up very fine. They are set up for a lot of wind erosion already and additional tillage will only make that potential for erosion worse.
Just how dry is it? At the SROC in Waseca, soil moisture is at the lowest level since they started recording that information back in 1977 at1.5” of available water in the top 5’. That said, most of that moisture right now is in the top foot in this area. We were fortunate to receive 1.95” of rainfall at the ranch in September but most did not receive that much. In town the amount was more like 1.7”. Soil sampling these fields has revealed that soils are getting drier too. This has necessitated using probes designed for use in dry soils. Sloughs, wetlands and streams are all as dry as anyone can remember. Water levels in lakes are also very low. Long term forecasts are not positive and some are indicating that droughts have a tendency to move from east to west. In our case, it already has. Between now and anhydrous ammonia application, it should allow time to trim trees in fence lines, clean up messes around the yard or heaven forbid, take some time off and go somewhere to enjoy yourself.
In the meantime the color peak should be sometime this week. If it works like it usually does, one good windy day and if you blink, you’ve missed it. The colors have changed rapidly though, likely in response to the dry late summer and warm dry fall. The colors have been intense however with some of the ash around the yard being particularly bright yellow. The nannyberries and chokeberries have both been a very intense red. The bur oaks are just starting to turn and they also appear to be more colorful than the dull brown they are some years. The red oak and pin oak in our yard should be fun to watch every day.
It appears our little hummingbird friends are gone for the season after leaving the nectar feeders out with no takers since September 21st. Juncos were first spotted here on the 26th. At the ranch and at the kindly neighbors pasture, groups of bluebirds are moving through. Oddly enough they seem attracted to some of the bluebird houses. Are they scoping out the housing market for next spring? We shall see. The robins have been busy devouring nannyberries, chokeberries and crabapples. With the dry soils there are very few earthworms and night crawlers near the surface so they have to make do. In the fields there seem to be an inordinate number of killdeers moving through. Are they trying to tell us something? Yes, they’re letting us know it will get colder and they’re leaving the area for warmer climes.
Ruby had a big weekend keeping up with several activities. It was time to get the last of the Pontiac and Norkotah potatoes dug so off to the small garden we went, potato fork in hand. Ruby is just fascinated by the soil moving when the fork is used to pry it loose. Her intensity increases when several potatoes are unearthed, just waiting for them to make a false move. Maybe Ruby thinks this is where the play balls come from but she takes her spuds very seriously. Probably one of her favorite fall pastimes though is chasing the water coming out of the hose. Mrs. Cheviot decided it was time to wash the siding on Sunday so spraying the house meant literally hours of entertainment for a small red and white Border Collie. It also meant one muddy mess of a small critter by the time it was all done so time for a timeout in the kennel where she fell fast asleep after her exercise time. After lunch it was time for naps all around anyway. Strange how that works this time of year.
See you next week…real good then.