OPINION: Dry Weather, Bumper Crops, and Deer
Summer is over, and so is Donnie's garden. Don't worry, he'll be shelling until Christmas.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
We’re supposed to get some rain this week. Let’s hope we do because things are getting pretty dry.
I have recorded only about 1.5 inches of rain since July 25, and all but one of those showers has been of the one-tenth or two-tenths variety, which really doesn’t do any good.
The saving grace is that this drought came after much of the growing season was done. I see a few late soybeans that are suffering, but for the most part the corn and bean crops were made by the middle of August.
It may be a record year for corn in Virginia, and I have seen some fields that almost certainly will yield 300 bushels an acre. It still amazes me how thick corn is planted these days. It used to be that you dropped a grain every six or so inches. Now they are barely two inches apart, some 31,000 grains per acre. And the stalks flourish.
There should also be a bumper crop of beans.
Grain prices, however, are not great. Corn is selling for about $4.25 a bushel (it was up to $7 a few years ago) and beans are barely bringing $10 a bushel (down from a high of $15).
Some analysts expect bean prices to go lower because China, which traditionally bought about 60 percent of the American crop, is looking elsewhere because of the Trump tariffs.
But that’s the way it is in the farming business. When yields are up, prices are down.
Cattle prices, however, are holding strong, as anyone who has bought a steak lately will affirm. Five-hundred-pound feeder calves are going from $3.50 or $4.20 a pound; almost unheard-of prices. The reason? The cattle population is down in the United States.
It was a great hay season with some fields yielding three cuttings (four for alfalfa). And the dry August made for great hay-making weather.
The problem is that if we don’t get substantial rain soon, farmers will have to start feeding that hay in October, six weeks early. One of my neighbors is already putting out a few rolls because his pasture is almost gone.
This is the time of year when the East Coast usually gets some good rains from tropical systems, but this season, despite all the predictions, we have had nothing but a few high tides along the coast.
Maybe the rain is saving up to become snow in the winter.
As I wrote earlier, I have a bumper crop of black walnuts on three of my four trees. One is so loaded that, despite the good early summer rains, the nuts are small and I wonder how much meat I will get from them. Like a sow with too many pigs, there are bound to be runts.
The walnuts have started to fall, and I have already picked up about two five-gallon buckets full. They are about two weeks early, in part because of the dry weather.
Now I must hull them and allow them to dry. I will start cracking about the first of November and will hopefully be finished by Christmas. I should have fresh walnuts for holiday baking.
The wonderful thing about this dry spell is that I haven’t had to mow the lawn in three weeks. That saves me time and gas money.
One problem I am having is that the ground is so hard I can’t get my tomato stakes pulled up. They need to be gone soon so that I can bushhog in anticipation of fall plowing in late October. Right now, I couldn’t get a plow point in the hard clay ground.
Oh! Dug my sweet potatoes and they did well. That officially ends my garden.
This is a transitional time for animals. The several hummingbirds that frequented my feeders this summer are still around, but I expect their departures at any time.
Deer, with the rut getting close, are becoming increasingly anxious and making the highways more dangerous. Be careful!
The litter of skunks that raised in a hole down from the mailbox are about grown as are the red fox pups from down around the barn.
No sign of starlings or geese flying south yet, but radar did pick up a swarm of Japanese lantern flies up in Northern Virginia the other day. Those pests are here to stay. I have been finding them dead all over my yard.
Fall is upon us. Do you realize we’re only about two months away from Thanksgiving? Where has this year gone?
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