Winter 2010
by Brek Burgweger
This fall and winter have been extremely wet in eastern North Carolina. We usually start planting winter wheat around the first week of November but the weather was so good the last week of October that I felt we should take advantage of it and start planting a week earlier. Little did I know that that timeframe would be the best opportunity to plant wheat for the rest of 2009. We finished planting on November 4th and exactly 1 week later received 12 inches of rain in 48 hours from a Noreaster that started off the coast of North Carolina. There was so much rain that the pumps that drain the farms couldn't keep up so the fields were under water.
Fortunately, the first of the wheat we planted in the last week of October was already germinated and out of the ground so the standing water didn't hurt it as much. The last 160 acres of wheat that we planted on November 4th was still in the ground and germinated but hadn't reached the top of the soil yet. The wheat still came out of the ground but was a little thinner than the rest of the wheat. For a lot of other farmers in our area, they either didn't plant wheat this year because it was so wet or the wheat they did plant didn't even germinate because it was planted just before the big rain. In all, there is very little winter wheat planted in eastern North Carolina this year.
Around the same time we plant wheat, we're also harvesting double crop soybeans. The soybean crop this year was the best we've had in a while. Yields were excellent and better than what we budgeted. We finished harvesting soybeans around November 10th which was exactly 2 days before the rain hit us. We grew all seed beans for Monsanto this year and were glad that we harvested them before the rain because it would have reduced quality considerably. Monsanto will pay a premium for good quality soybeans.
This winter I've been working on budgets for 2010 and I have to say it looks a lot better financially than 2009. Although the commodity markets have dropped about 40 cents from the corn market in the last week. I still think 2010 will be a profitable year if we can raise good crops. Other than budgets and getting chemicals and fertilizer ready for next year, we've been working around the shop cleaning equipment and getting all the little minor repairs straightened out before we go to the fields this spring. We'll also start shipping out corn in the next few weeks.
