April 10 is the day Trent Brandenburg would like to begin planting corn, but the rain forecast and soil temperatures rule the choice of date. The predicted 2–to-3-inch rainfall this week with a cold weekend do not provide the ideal seedbed conditions for fast germination and vigorous early growth. Trent now plans to begin planting […]

“I Don’t Know What Normal Is Any More” Trent Brandenburg made this observation while reviewing the strange weather patterns of the last 3 years, including the present unusually warm winter with more rain than snow.  Trent believes the top eight inches or so of topsoil are moist and recovered from the drouth of 2012, but […]

Please Santa, Send More Rain Trent Brandenburg has, of course, been a good boy this year and would like very much for Santa to bring rain to his fields before the soil freezes hard. After the soil is frozen hard, any winter rain or snow-melt will mostly run off, not recharging the soil moisture which […]

“I’m Ready To Get This Year Wrapped Up” Trent Brandenburg wants to complete his soybean harvest and fall tillage to complete the outdoor part of this crop year. Marketing decisions and work on his implements in the machine shed continue all winter. Trent is about a quarter done with his soybean harvest, with yields averaging […]

September 2012 Trent Brandenburg finds a bright side to the awful drought of 2102.  He sees some improvement in soybean yields resulting from the heavy rains of last weekend, 5.5 inches followed by another three-quarters-inch. The rain came too late to help the corn yield  and didn’t even delay the corn harvest much, because the […]

Cornfields in central Illinois usually look like this in mid-October if they haven’t been harvested already. This year the record-breaking drought has made fields look like this in July when corn is supposed to be actively growing and pollinating. Considering that rainfall totals for the year in Trent’s area are roughly 20 inches below normal, […]

With the extensive drought from California to Ohio and corn prices soaring to over $8 a bushel, Trent is one of thousands of farmers who very seriously want rain. Trent tries to look for positive things to offset the pervasive gloom he hears from older farm operators. He says, ” The fields that are getting […]

Trent Brandenburg notes some corn damage already from the extended dry period. According to the National Weather Service in Lincoln, “Much of central Illinois (except for Springfield) is running 7-17 inches behind 2011 precipitation totals for the first half of the year, with Paris and Lawrenceville nearly 20 inches below last year” Trent estimates that […]

Trent is about half-done with his soybean planting today, May 11, and expects to finish Monday, May 14, if there is no rain.  The planting is going well, although from one field to the next the soil condition ranges from dusty-dry in this field, to wetter than you should plant in the next. The corn […]

As the days get longer marking the arrival of spring, the farming focus is on planning the year ahead, beginning with planting beginning in April. Trent’s immediate decisions concern crop insurance. Big changes in the crop insurance landscape this year require careful study of the various programs and options ahead of the March 15 signup […]