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![\"2015](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefarmerslife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Phonto-1.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1\")
Another year of blogging and farming gone by already! It was an interesting year that started out too wet, but brought us perfect harvest weather even if the yields weren\u2019t perfect.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been sharing my top ten most viewed posts of 2015 on facebook and twitter so I thought I\u2019d collect them all here in a list for quick reference. \u00a0Check \u2019em out!<\/p>\n
\u201cA cover crop does just what it says. \u00a0It covers the soil during the period between the time you harvest one crop and plant the next. \u00a0For my farm this means winter. \u00a0Our cover was seeded by airplane in mid September just ahead of harvest.\u00a0We chose aerial application in order\u2026\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCompacted soil layers inhibit root growth which limits the ability of a crop to locate water and nutrients. \u00a0We used to rip about a third or so of our acres every year going across entire fields. \u00a0Now we just want to hit high traffic areas in our fields and maybe wet spots because machinery isn\u2019t the only source of soil compaction. \u00a0Areas that pond frequently can\u2026..\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are roughly five months between us and mature corn, soybean, and popcorn crops ready for harvest. So what happens now that we are done planting? Plenty! In fact I almost feel like we are busier now because we aren\u2019t nearly 100% focused on one task. Now we are juggling several things at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always wondered why earthworms come out of the ground when it rains. \u00a0I don\u2019t know about you but after a rain I can always find them on driveways and roads. \u00a0Sometimes I\u2019ll see thousands of them on a short stretch of road as if they are having some kind of mass annelid exodus from a field on one side of the road to the other. \u00a0So what gives?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe use glyphosate on our farm. \u00a0Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. \u00a0We grow wheat. \u00a0I have never seen our wheat germinate as poorly as the right half of that picture shows. \u00a0And not over a wide area like a whole field that has a history of Roundup treatments. \u00a0There could be any number of factors that contributed to the appearance of that wheat on the right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe plant on average 32,000 seeds per acre taking the whole farm in account. 32,000 x 850 = 27,200,000 corn plants. Just to keep things simple let\u2019s say all the corn plants emerged and survived to harvest. \u00a0In some soils we plant more corn, and some areas we plant less. \u00a0But one still might wonder why I care about one single ear among 27 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo-till is just what is sounds like. \u00a0A true no-till system avoids disturbing the soil with tools like chisel\u00a0plows, field cultivators, disks, and plows. \u00a0Not all of our acres are no-till, but we have been doing less tillage as of late including putting more acres into no-till. \u00a0I\u2019m 32 years old and I\u2019ve never actually ran a moldboard plow over a field aside from the single acre we took turns playing on a few years ago in our 1956 John Deere 70 Diesel and three-bottom plow.\u201d<\/p>\n