Round 4 or Wind at My Back

      The inch and half of moisture the first week of July brought on a few weeds.  If we were doing chemical weeding, those big ones would be called escapes.

    We’ll just call them survivors, who didn’t die with the last operation.  Here’s a close up for the soil scientists.  These are new growth.  You have to look hard to see the new weeds just emerging.

  Miller bar to the rescue.

  I wonder how many acres this old machine has gone over.  It works by going under the soil surface.  Weeds, dirt, everything goes over the bar which knocks the weed’s roots loose.  It works pretty well if you don’t go too deep.  It leaves the soil relatively undisturbed on the surface, so it can be hard to tell where you have been and where you need to go.

     Whenever I start a tillage operation, I have control of the wind.  That is to say, however I lay out the land to farm it, the wind will arrange itself so I have a tail wind in one direction and a head wind in the other. This time I followed a path the wind guys created to lay underground cable to neighboring wind towers.  Its general direction was east-southeast. For two days, the wind blew out of the east-southeast.  The wind hardly ever blows out of the east.  I got covered in dust.

     But, after 30 hours of tractor-riding in 100 degree heat, with dirt plaguing me half the time, the weeds are gone.  For now.

    So off we go to Kansas to our local friendly auto dealer to have a 100K checkup on our car.  We just thought it was hot in Colorado.  And dry.  Here’s what Kansas looks like, even after some rain the first week of July.

     No, that’s not the African Veldt.  It’s Northwest Kansas.  It got up to 110 degrees both days we were there.  Before the early-July rain, the local fire department guys were called out at least once a day with multiple calls on many days.  They’re unpaid volunteers.  Support your local fire department.

     We had near-100 mile per hour winds on Saturday before Memorial Day.  It knocked all the fronds off the asparagus plants.  Heat and drought haven’t helped it recover.

     The horse radish is doing ok.  We’re happy to be back in Colorado.  Upper 90’s and low 100’s are better than 110.

      Mowing and yard time again.