The Wheat Conundrum

         This time of year, the wheat all should be looking like this:

         But instead it looks like this:

    The “bare” patches are filling in with weeds, lamb’s quarter, sunflowers, the usual harvest nightmares.  Since any chemical control is out if the organic status is to be maintained, one would have to swath the crop and pick it up with the combine when the green weeds have dried.

     In the past since I began this project of sod busting and being a clodhopper, Neighborly would be here to visit with and say what he might do and what maybe I should do.  But Neighborly took the walk into the next world, leaving me to grapple with farming decisions on my own.

     Visiting with his heir, I find that many of the neighbors have applied for crop insurance.  The insurance adjuster has determined what benefits the current crop deserves and has“released” it.  The farmers are now able to destroy the wheat and plant another crop.  They have destroyed the crop, either by spraying with an herbicide such as Roundup or by plowing it out. 

     Judging from past experience, the country will be filled with Prozo millet.  Further calling upon past experience, that means a huge supply of millet next fall.  That supply means a lousy price for that commodity.

     There are other millets that might not be so abundant, especially in the organic market, but no local buyer.  One would have to have bin room to store the crop until it could be moved to a further distant market.

     Lots of decisions to be made in the next few days.

     Meanwhile life goes on.  This year’s summer fallow is still too wet to disk.  The asparagus got off to an early start.  Usually, I spray it for weeds a week or two before it begins to appear, but it was ahead of me this year.

     Mother Nature to the rescue.  We cut three early batches.  The cold snap hit during the last week of April and froze everything that was above ground.  I cut off all the flaccid spears and sprayed the weeds.  The spears are once again erupting through the topsoil.  They can no longer hide themselves among the weeds.

I guess I had better go mow the lawn while I wait for the summer fallow to dry out.