Farmers are ready to get in the fields

CHAD HENDERSON – MADISON, ALABAMA

Chad Henderson is part of a fifth-generation farming operation in Madison, Alabama. Henderson Farms operates over 8,000 acres of dryland and irrigated corn, dryland soybeans, wheat, and dryland and irrigated double-crop soybeans. When not farming, Chad can be found carrying on another proud family tradition as a drag racer for Henderson Racing.

I think I've been fired from our shop crew. The month has been packed with travel and meetings. I've been able to attend some great meetings starting with the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville and of course I'll be headed to the Commodity Classic in Orlando later this week. A lot of time has been spent away from the farm, but still doing work for the farm.

The ground is starting to dry up finally at home. The wheat is greening up fast and starting to put some new growth on. All of our side dressing applications are done now.

We just finished up building a new strip freshener rig from an old 24-row planter. We will use that to freshen up the strip-till application that we did last fall. We put out phosphorous and potassium in the fall and now we will use the strip-freshener to put out nitrogen and sulfur right before planting. Applying the N and S right before planting helps prevent leaching.

Our planters are ready, for the most part. We are only waiting on a few parts from Precision Planting to arrive before we finish up. This week, we will start running our seed through each meter as part of our testing. Running the seed is an important step we do before leaving the shop and heading to the field. It gives us a chance to correct any issue before acres are planted.

LEE LUBBERS – GREGORY, SOUTH DAKOTA

Lee Lubbers of Gregory, South Dakota, grew up in the farming tradition, and remembers using leftover scholarship money as the down payment for his first tractor and rent for 200 acres. Today, he farms more than 17,000 acres of dryland soybeans, corn, and wheat. Lubbers says one of the most important things to him is to always be learning and challenging himself to build an operation and a legacy that the next generation can be proud of.

They say spring is near, but winter keeps grinding along. We had a storm about 10 days ago and it sounds like a potentially really big storm is coming later this coming week. Temperatures have started to moderate and our grain hauling can only happen when our yards and bin sites are frozen up early in the mornings. Otherwise, things get torn up terribly, even with good gravel.

Our shop projects keep progressing. The second planter is just getting finished up. We will be servicing the 4WDs and working on smaller items. Everyone is looking forward to spring and seeing the snow melt down enough to see the ground. As the snow settles down, we are hoping it doesn't turn cold for a stretch, as we will then have the winter wheat sitting under a big ice brick and it can die off from that. Time will tell. We'll just keep pushing along and see how it breaks dormancy. Right now, with all the snow we have, it will be one of the latest years for breaking dormancy we've seen in a decade or two.

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