Combines Wheat condition

Take time to write Washington (DC, not the dead president) ..Solution to farm mess..... instead of handing out big buck for foreign aid ---send vouchers to buy grain. No dollars, just commodities! Soft red winter wheat in the mid south, average. We are DRY in the mid south and lower Ohio valley. One of my friends well just went dry last week.

I live in SW NE near the KS border, about 90 miles east of the CO state line. We have had only a .5" of moisture since September. We're getting very dry on top. We have a little irrigated wheat that we started the pivot on yesterday! Which I've never had to do this time of year before.It is DRY!

I was through your part of country in 1993 when I went on the wheat harvest. We stopped at Imperial or Grant I can't remember which. Our situation is similar, we always are the last guys in our area to sow trying to avoid early rust and green bugs. This year it was so dry that we couldn't get our ground in shape until late October and didn't sow a kernel till November 4. The wheat is there it looks like crap though as the wheat drilled in the tractor tracks came up about 2 weeks after the rest.If we don't get some moisture soon it won't tiller much. We are continous crop down here so we don't have a lot of deep moisture, with two years of extreme drought in a row I don't think summer fallowing would have helped. We averaged nearly 75 on 550 acres last year(dryland). I think we have the yield potential to make maybe half that. I bet it isn't often you can run a sprinkler up there this time of the year. I have a friend that farms in the Texas Panhandle where it is considerably colder than my area and he said those things will freeze up and break downIJIJIJIJ WW

The wheat here in NE Mo looks fair at best.

We have to pick our days to run the pivots this time of year, alright! The last couple of days were in the mid 60's and around 35 at night. Today we're back to normal with 40 for the high and expecting 20 tonight with MAYBE a chance of snow tomorrow. We have drop nozzles on the pivots so we can run them down close to freezing or slightly below. The older pivots that had nozzles on top of the pipe could not be ran safely less than 35 degrees as the water would turn to ice and build up on the trusses and towers and weight them down until they would collaspe!

SB,

I live about 100 miles ESE of Grant and Imperial. Nice farmland there. Here, we are more rolling with some pasture. About 30% irrigated.

SB,

Ended up with less than a half inch of moisture. May get another couple of inches in the next two days. I noticed this p.m. where it had melted the snow that it only soaked in about an inch and was dry under that.

An acquaintance in Caldwell reports wheat appears to be in very good shape in that area. From Barber Co (Kiowa, Medicine lodge)to the east, it all looks pretty good, presently. West of there, not so good.