Riverbend Farm Newsletter October 26, 2009

Saturday was nice (i.e. not raining) and we did not get much rain on Sunday. I could really go for two weeks of sunny dry weather. Failing that, I would take two weeks of cold dry weather. Bob Weisman, Meteorology professor at St. Cloud State University ranks this as the 5th wettest and 6th coldest Octobers since they started keeping records. On the positive side, the swamps and marshes are filling up again after being down for a couple years, and the it has to be good for all the trees.

We are still trying to wrap up our fall harvest. We did get the potatoes all out on Monday. Loosening the carrots with a fork works, but is very slow going and they are caked in mud. I bought a single point subsoiler to see if I can’t reduce the amount of digging involved. There are still a few turnips and radishes in the field, but they grow mostly on top of the ground and are easy to harvest. There is a little spinach left, it will probably run out this week.

The real slow spots are the corn, beans, and cover crop. The corn and beans are too wet to store, much less harvest with the picker or combine. We have started picking corn by hand to get it out of the field and are drying it in the greenhouse. If we piled it in the corn crib, it is so wet that it would get moldy. What we have been getting looks good.

The Mandan Bride has recovered nicely since it’s near extinction (here anyway) a few years ago. This landrace is one that I have been growing for about 15 years. Next year I think that I’m going to plant twice as much and harvest half of it with the corn picker to see if a machine pickable strain can be selected. The Nothstine Dent was a pretty weak stand, but what ears were there are nice. Most of that variety will become seed for next year. It is supposed to be a good tasting flour corn. The OP MN 95 did pretty well, but the deer are eating it. The middle of the planting has been hit pretty hard.

The beans are more of a problem. The seeds are so soft that they would be smashed by the combine if they would come out of the wet pods. Beans will only hang on the plants so long before they start to drop their seeds. The Cranberry beans have started already. Soybeans hold up much better than dry beans in these conditions. There are so many beans it is unlikely that we are going to hand harvest all of them. Worst case, we will hand harvest enough for seed for next year.

With spinach, corn, and beans still in the field, cover crop planting has slowed down. It is too wet to disk before planting, but the soil is so soft the drill is able to get most of the seeds in the unprepared ground. The wet weather is helping the rye germinate, the cool weather is making it hard for it to emerge. Right now it is taking about two weeks for it to come up.

All this cool wet weather is just an annoyance. We have had a great year. We are over 10% ahead of last year over all. Thanks to all of you for making this such a good year.

Greg

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