2016 Harvest Update

   This year has been the most confusing of my 60+ years of farming.  The weather looked like it was going to treat us pretty good, but, mostly after the fact, we found it wasn't as good as it first appeared.  I thought we missed the frost in April, but as it turned out, not quite.  The moisture was coming along just fine, then it shut off.  The years moisture was just short of our long term average.  The heat wave in May, although not real hot, apparently did damage depending on where the crop was in it's development.  The temperature for this growing and harvest season was quite comfortable.  A relatively mild winter, and no 100+ days. Very different from 2015's long stretch of 100+ temperatures.  All in all everything was looking pretty good.  Looking back on Art Douglas' prediction, I think he was right on for my immediate area.  There apparently was a big swing of temperature in the April-May period that set us up for falling number issues depending on area, and wheat cultivar.  I knew when it happened but didn't think anything about it, --not severe, not unusual.  Everything I hear is antidotal; however, I'm of the opinion that the test is badly flawed.  Inconsistency in the ability to replicate the numbers, even in a relatively narrow range, is wide spread.  It appears to me that the milling industry has found a way to purchase high quality grain, --cheap, and at our expense.  Hopefully, this will be addressed before another harvest.  I have been hearing of some fantastic yields, but some are pretty mediocre,  and some fields have very low FN's, but not all of them.  With the quality issues and plummeting prices, this will be a year we hope to never repeat.
     Now, for our farm.  ---Wheat yields were good, but not exceptional, --with exception.  The FN's varied across the fields ranging from 279-330.  Wheat yields ranged from 83 to a little over 100.  This yield range is close to norm for us at this stage,--slow but steady gain over time.  We have a variety of soils ranging from very complex shallow ground to deep Athena soils.  Our cover crop ground was the 83 and we consider that fantastic.  This is the worst ground we have with complex soils and large areas that have a couple of inches of soil over fractured rock, and infested with Rush Skeleton weed.  This area was seeded to a multiple cultivar (brassica/legume) cover crop last year and used 3" water compared to our CF.  This spring there was less than an inch (0.8") difference in moisture.  There were variations in yield over the CC area but none of the shallow spots showed significant drop as was expected.  Was this unexpected yield do to the cover crop?  Too early to tell!  One year doesn't make a trend, but since it wasn't a flop, it's encouragement to expand the practice.  Our experience is paralleling the experience of other farmers in the area, --covers used 3" moisture, yields didn't collapse.  This also matches the literature on the subject.  The remainder of our Brundage 96 looked exceptional through harvest, but didn't end up yielding exceptional.  The Puma went over a hundred.
--- The mustard was a disappointment.  Yields ranged from ≈680 to 870#/a.  The stand emerged well with an OK population.  Quality was good.  It was harvested with the stripper head.  The field Rep. indicated that they were finding similar results region wide, and no real explanation as to why.  In our case, my thoughts are: --we should seed 8-10#/ac instead of the 5-6, and that we seeded to shallow.  we had emergence over too long of time span.  I'm guessing that another factor was that the little heat wave in May hit the mustard at the wrong time in it's development.  I didn't see frost damage during emergence.
--- The winter peas were problematic from the start.  They yielded 1262#/a.  One field was destroyed because of contamination with Billy Beans.   They were all dormant seeded in November.  They came up this spring looking great and high population.  With no experience in dormant seeding we didn't put on the pre-emergence chemistry.  Bad mistake!  Spring applications of grass and broadleaf herbicides were a total failure.  Dormant seeding of winter peas has great potential, but make sure to get the pre-emerge chemistry applied.  We ended up with an even over-story of Jim Hill Mustard, that proved to be challenging to harvest.  An IH8230 with MacDon header had no easier time than our N7 and standard head.  A very slow grind.  The crop grade showed high percent of hard seed which was subtracted from the germ making it un-usable as seed stock.  Our supplier had only one field that returned seed quality winter peas, and they were seeded in the spring, --so missed the environmental condition that caused the hard seed.  We will likely see Austrian peas show up for several years because of this hard seed issue.  Fortunately they are not difficult to remove.
----The spring peas were fantastic at Thornton.  Thornton was DRY.  They were ≈6" below normal, but the yields were very good.  Most communities north and south of Thornton had fairly normal precipitation.  Except for the rainfall, the other environmental conditions favored a good crop in 2016.  Our "Ginny" peas ranged from 2400-2980#/a, depending on the field.  The normally high yielding low ground tallied as much as 6500#/a.  They stood way too long for a green pea; however, the bleach, was insignificant, and seed coat damage was reasonable.  Normally green peas will have significant bleach if they stand beyond maturity.  Ginny is a great cultivar.  We harvested them with a standard head w/o pea lifters.  A slow harvest and in areas some peas were left on the vine (too deep in the track).  Our old wheat residue was left intact and we had a lot of pea residue left in the field.  We expected we would process all the residue, leaving exposed ground, which is normal with pea harvest, --but didn't.
--- Our DNS (Glee)@ 42b/a was ok.  Heavy weight, but only 13+% protein.  Stand was good but maybe it needed to be thicker.  Consider increasing seed rate, --we had 2-3 tillers and don't want more than two.  Probably needed more N to get protein.
--- Our SB (Lenatah) @3030#/a was ok.  Heavy weight and quality was excellent.  Stand was good, but may consider increased seeding rate.
--- We had a Viterra test plot of 6 new spring canola cultivars for the area.  Most were a GMO of one type or another.  They all had excellent yields ranging between 1700-2700#/a.  The plot was in the flat in front of our house.  The trial was not limited in moisture, and had a high pH (8+) in much of it.  We seeded the plots after the mustard and before moving to Thornton.  The seeding rate was ≈4#/a.  The stand developed over about 3 weeks,--it didn't seem to effect the outcome.  The canola probably stood too long; however, there was very low shatter on all the cultivars.  The quality of the stand didn't allow much movement within the crop canopy.