The first snowfall of the year has finally arrived! Up until now, the weather has been warm, which allowed us to finish up all the fieldwork we wanted to get done, plus more! Not too many years do you have weather that allows you to do fieldwork right up until the 2nd week in November!
We ended up getting between 4-8″ of snow over the past few days – the least amount was down south and the most were on our north land. The snow was wet and heavy, which is good news, as it had a high moisture content. Estimates of actual moisture are 18mm down south and close to 40mm up north.
We also completed a yard expansion south of our shop/office. We expanded the yard another 300 feet to the south – this allowed us to move all our seed bins to one location (3 that were in this yard already, and 3 from the new yard we bought last fall). This also allowed us to move 4 more fertilizer bins into the main yard as well – and now we have enough room to hold 100% of our fertilizer needs for the new acreage base we are farming.
Besides fieldwork and working on the yard expansion, we have also been keeping 2-3 trucks steady hauling grain. Most of the contracts we had in place were for fall movement, and some companies were even calling for grain that is contracted for next spring, as they are having a hard time sourcing grain due to the low yields.
All the fertilizer is also onsite. With the run-up in fertilizer prices (which are currently 270% higher than what we paid for fertilizer for the 2021 crop year) it is nice to have it all on-farm and secured in place.