The scurs and the Weather Eye are keeping the heat coming. Will our warm spell continue or will we have a taste of September instead? Starting Wednesday, partly sunny with a moderate chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80’s with lows in the low 70’s. Thursday, mostly sunny with a slight chance of an evening thunderstorm. Highs in the upper 80’s with lows in the low 70’s. Sunny on Friday with highs in the upper 80’s and lows in the upper 60’s. Saturday, mostly sunny with a slight chance of evening showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the mid-80’s with lows in the upper 60’s. Mostly sunny on Sunday with a modest chance of an evening shower or thunderstorm. Highs in the low 80’s with lows in the upper 60’s. Monday, mostly cloudy with a good chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80’s with lows in the mid-60’s. Mostly cloudy for Tuesday with a slight possibility of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the low 80’s with lows in the mid-60’s. July 20th marks the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing. The scurs will be heading to the hardware store where they are doing land office business in putty knives to remove Tootsie Rolls and bubblegum from shoes after Farm and City Days.
More crop progress this past week as Mother Nature keeps her foot on the gas. It was widely believed that it would be difficult to make up the amount of GDU’s we were behind after a miserable May and June. July has turned out to be warmer than normal thus far and as of last Wednesday at the SROC, we were only 6% behind after being down 16% the previous week with calculations starting May 1st. Impressive, but certainly not unprecedented. Many early planted corn fields should, as predicted, be showing tassels sometime this week. Some tassels on early planted, early silking hybrids were showing a few tassels already late last week. Soybeans continue to hammer along too with nearly all fields being R2 with some showing signs of some initial pods being set. The recent heat has pushed them along fast enough, so that rows are touching on some of the early planted 30” row soybeans.
A recent journey to the west demonstrated how lucky we really are. Was fortunate to attend a field clinic on the soybean gall midge near Luverne. Not the end of the world, but you can see it from there. Following I-90, the crops looked fairly decent until we got to about Jackson; then it fell off the table. Many fields were unplanted and many of those planted appeared questionable as far as actually making it to harvest, especially given an early frost. The soybean gall midge clinic was eye opening. If this pest takes off like soybean aphids did, it could make them look like a walk in the park. No one knows where the soybean gall midge came from, how to control them or what their long-term prognosis is. After being able to see them up close and personal it was downright scary. Stay tuned.
Along the insect lines, we heard our first cicada on Sunday. Later than some years, but not terribly late either, lending credence to the fact that the warm weather has been catching us up more quickly than anticipated. It certainly has kept the flying, biting insect population active as well. Spraying the pasture fence at the kindly neighbors’ on Sunday was a little like taking your life in your own hands. Between deer flies, horse flies, stable flies and mosquitoes, if one species wasn’t attempting to bite me, another one was.
The bird status at the ranch continues to show signs of a good hatch as the young orioles appear at the jelly feeder. They are equally as combative as their adult counterparts, taking little guff from the house sparrows that think they have a monopoly on the feeders. It’s very possible there was a nest of orchard orioles in the Norway maple as they seem to really like hanging out in that dense tree. In past years after the leaves are down, that tree usually has three to five nests of varying species in it.
As mentioned above, the 20th marks the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon. I can still remember the lead-up to the flight which blasted off on August 16th. All the Apollo missions starting with Apollo 7 were followed closely in school as they led up to what was to become one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century. With Apollo 8 orbiting the moon, we knew something very special was about to take place the following summer. Indeed it did.
When the Eagle landed on the lunar surface, we were in school, but I don’t recall watching it on live TV. Some six and a half hours later, when Neil Armstrong was about to begin his descent down the ladder from the lunar module, we were already in bed. However, my folks decided that this was probably something we should see, so they allowed us to come downstairs to watch what was about to unfold. I was 11 at the time and staying up past 9 o’clock was a big deal. The black and white Motorola TV probably didn’t do justice to the event, but the picture was clear and there was no question about what was taking place. When the words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” were spoken, it sent shivers down my spine, knowing that we had just witnessed history being made.
We of course didn’t hear about some of the hair-raising details at the time. Any miscalculations could’ve spelled disaster. It turned out there had been some computer glitches, so amongst other things, Armstrong had to maneuver the spacecraft manually to a spot that wasn’t so strewn with boulders in order to land. Something else that few recall was that the Soviets had attempted to steal some of the thunder of the U.S. manned lunar landing by landing an unmanned probe and returning it to earth. The Luna 15 timing coincided closely with the Apollo 11 mission. The Soviet mission spacecraft, however, crashed into the moon about the time the Americans were already walking around and it did not return. There was a prepared congratulatory speech beamed to the astronauts from then President Nixon. What many didn’t realize was there was also a speech prepared in case disaster had struck. Luckily, it wasn’t necessary and all the astronauts of course all returned to earth safely. After the successful all-out effort to land a man on the moon, it was a very proud moment to be an American.
See you next week…real good then.