The scurs made it through another week unscathed. Their forecast for tiny chances of showers were true both from an amount and odds standpoint. What’s in store this week? Starting Wednesday, partly cloudy with highs of 50 and lows of 30 – 35. Thursday through Saturday, clear skies with highs around 50 and lows near 30. Sunday, partly cloudy and slightly warmer with a small possibility of a shower. Highs of 55 and lows of 35. Mostly sunny on Halloween Monday, warmer again with highs near 60 and lows around 40. Tuesday, mostly cloudy with highs once again near 60 and lows of 40. The normal high for Halloween is 51 and the normal low is 30. The scurs foresee no repeat performance on the 20th anniversary of the Halloween Blizzard for trick or treaters.
Harvest continues to streak towards the finish line. Some anhydrous ammonia has been applied and like anything else, if you’re the one doing it, it went on perfectly. If you’re not, it probably is too early yet. Some areas did receive more rain than others in the October 13th rainfall event so it is quite variable. Soil moisture continues to be a question mark though as the hard soil conditions, particularly on the higher, lower organic matter parts of fields, are making it difficult for tillage implements to penetrate to full depth. With little rain falling one may want to be a little picky about where and when ammonia is being applied. As one who spends many hours afield this time of year, even where more rain did fall, there are still places the soil is extremely hard and anecdotal evidence from those doing fall tillage tends to make me believe I’m not seeing things.
What I am seeing fortunately for the pheasants, both of them, is a lot of corn on the ground behind the combines. Some are in denial that there is much field loss. Given the extremely dry corn and ear droppage that occurred when the snapping rolls grabbed the stalk along with the whirring chopping corn head blades, it makes one wonder why there wasn’t more in some cases. It doesn’t take much corn to add up to a significant loss. For instance, if you see only four kernels per square foot on the ground, that’s almost two bushel per acre. In many cases this year, it’s not unusual to see 10 – 20 kernels per square foot.
Rainfall continues to be a concern. We are far short of what we’d normally expect at the ranch with only .37” of precipitation falling thus far. In town it’s even worse with only a 10th for the month. Last week’s report from the SROC in Waseca summed it up nicely when they reported they were at only 42% of field soil moisture capacity or about five inches less than we would expect for this time of year. Dryness abounds.
It has been slow at the ranch on the bird watching front lately, but there were a couple rooster pheasants that flew out of neighbor Mark’s corn as he was harvesting the other day. His grove is one of the nicest in the area when it comes to winter shelter for them. Made me feel good to see they were still around. Once the corn is off there always seem to be more pheasants out there than we once thought on this side of Bugtussle anyway. Oh sure we still have a few chickadees, juncos and blue jays along with the occasional smattering of a goldfinch or two but certainly nothing like we had in August. TP has reported similar findings at her feeders in town. Give them time. With a colder and wetter winter predicted it won’t take long if that happens for many birds to be looking to press the “easy” button. The squirrels have already done that. Putting some of the ear corn collected out in a feeder last week, the one lone fox squirrel made the first couple ears last several days. Replacing it one morning, I was shocked to see it all gone the next morning. Deer perhaps? The following morning there were 3 fox squirrels taking turns so it came as no great shock that the corn was disappearing as fast as it was.
Sunday finally meant a long awaited trip to Mom’s with Ruby in tow. Luckily Ruby had worn off the powerful odor of whatever it was she rolled in earlier in the week. She definitely earns her nickname, Stinkpot, when that happens. It was our annual vegetable delivery trip, taking some of the bounty we have been blessed with to share. We brought a sampling of most of what we produce including Haralson and Fireside apples, Pontiac and Norkotah potatoes, three kinds of squash, carrots, Indian corn and gourds. Since we had recently butchered lambs there were also some packages of that to be shared. Ruby and Fudgie were off for their run around the yard. When it came to deciding what to fix for dinner, there was plenty to choose from so I grilled some lamb steaks while Mom cut up some carrots, micro waved some squash and baked a couple potatoes. There was already a pie baked when I arrived so the aroma was enough to make anyone hungry. Can’t top Mom’s apple pie with the brown sugar crust with plenty of cinnamon and some ice cream on top. Apple pie just isn’t apple pie without both. Best of all I got to take the rest of the pie back home along with a freshly baked loaf of banana bread as well as a bag of pretzel M&M’s. Think I got the better end of that deal.
It will soon be time for the little fat buddies to start their winter training sessions. The chairman of the board seems to be mired in tillage operations at this point so we’re waiting until he gets that out of his system. In the meantime there will be plenty of tales about the wild cropping season we’ve just been through and the endless honeydew lists that await the little fat buddies after they’ve made all their daily scheduled appointments. There are also likely to be lots of goodies with Halloween and the church bazaars (or is it bizarres?) to supply us with nourishment for the long winter ahead.
See you next week…real good then.