2011 Air Tour

Every year the local Soil and Water Conservation Districts sponsor an air tour.  For $30 you get a half hour plane ride to look things over.  I try to go every year just for the fun of it.  I didn't see a lot I didn't suspect or expect.  But I did find a few curious things.

Look to the right of the road in the middle of this picture. See the dark green strip? I guess the fertilizer applicator made a double pass about 1 round in?

 If you look just above the pond at the bottom of the picture there are some spots of down corn on a hillside with thin soil (even for us thin!)  it doesn't show up very well this small, but there are streaks of down corn that appear to follow varieties.  I striped my refuge in these fields.  Going to have to do some research and see what is planted where.

Here is a field we spotted on the way here from the airport.  Somebody may get a surprise.

The more you look the more you don't understand. For instance, the 2 strips to the right of center running crossways to the field that appear to be standing.

I had a pretty good idea where it was, so I drove past it on the way home.  Here is what it looks like on the ground in a ways from the bins on the middle left side

Yuck.

Here is Gramp's and Mom's.  Kind of shows what this year has been like for us. The road in the middle of the photo is north and south. We planted about 50 acres on the Northeast corner of the farm early.  Later we planted the rest of the beans.  The early planted behind the house are burning up from lack of moisture.

  To the top right corn is 80 acres that is irrigated and planted to seed production.  Well, sort of.  maybe this shows it better.

 The left side of the circle is Gramp's.  The three different colors are the three plantings.  We planted the north (left in photo) and west sides of the field, then a few days later planted more.  To the east of the middle of the circle on the left side it is darker because that 11 acres or so is soybeans. It got to late for seed corn.  lanting the seed corn I got the planter stuck about that dark spot in the middle of the circle.

Cameras do funny things.  This field is twice as long as it is wide.  Looks square in the photo.  After it was planted and up I put the GPS on the 4WD Mule and tried to run around it and see how much area was in the unplanted low spot in the lower right corner.  I had to pull out because I was afraid of getting it stuck.

 Just for a change, this is a field of seed production that was harvested last week.

 This is Mom's from the north.  A square, reasonably level 160 acres. We planted it 4or 5 times and didn't replant any of it. That isn't planted on the contour.  If you exclude the high spots the house and sheds are on there probably isn't 3 feet difference in height from the southeast corner to the northwest.  It is planted how the soil dried this Spring.  And you may notice a couple spots along the east side that were not planted at all.  The light area running from the center to the upper left is not a glare on the window.  That is a sand streak that will probably not even raise good weeds this year