One of the reasons we went to Dove Creek was to see a collection of antique tractors.  Although, I took lots of photos I thought everyone would enjoy this one.

Not your typical tractor, that is for sure!

We are ready for the second cutting of hay; the alfalfa is just starting to bloom, so maybe tomorrow we will do the swathing.

The oats are headed out and starting to fill with milk, after much pondering we are going to cut them for oat hay, instead of harvesting them as oats. 

The pinto beans are shooting feelers so the last cultivation for all of our crops is officially over. 

We have been having so much rain that the irrigation water is a red/chocolate color. This water is like a thick coffee causing the irrigation tubes and the gated pipe gates to plug up.  As the water moves through the opening the mud collects and stops the tubes, or gates from taking anymore water.  We have to check every 2-3 hours to make sure everything is running and in good order. OTHERWISE, the plants suffer, and the ‘escape’ ditches fill up and flood. 

What an odd read this has been.

I took most of these shots just as the sun was sitting (9:30 p.m.)  The spots you see over the oats are bugs that were caught the light of the flash.

Another odd thing is we have lots, and lots, and lots of ladybugs this year.  A blessing to people who do not like to use chemicals on crops!

Have a nice weekend!

The weather is always such an interesting subject.  I suppose it is because we all live so close to the land that weather is part and parcel of what we do every day.

We are still having rain.  Some days just a down pour or two, some days lots of rain, or just a gentle rain that goes on for days.  Anyway it is more rain than normal…. we are also experiencing signs that an early fall and a hard winter are on the way. (Sigh.  Double Sigh)

Weirdly the milkweed plants are already setting seed pods, weeds that never show up until late August are blooming wildly right now and there are other signs.

I dread winter!!!  I love spring, summer, and fall, but winter drags on me.  Just plain drags and to think of one that comes early and lasts long….oh, I don’t even want to go there.

So here is a photo of the down pour three days ago.  With an afternoon thunderstorm predicated for today.  The sun sure has been nice!  And it IS July so I have several months before I have to worry, now don’t I?

Our corn has grown amazingly well this year. 

On June 30^th it was Linki size

then on the 4^th of July it was Bladen size,

and today it is showing signs of tasseling out.

Tasseling out is one of the most critical stages of corns’ development. What a farmer is aiming for is a large kernel number per ear on each stalk of corn.  In other words a full ear of kernels!  Most corn ears have about 12 to 16 rows of kernels, but if the conditions are just right you can sometimes have rows of upwards to 20!  Now that is cool and helps with the tonnage at harvest.

I won’t go into tasseling and silking and pollination at this time.  But suffice it to say, the corn is definitely ‘knee high by the 4^th of July’!

Not one of those really fast tractor pulls, but just your plain farm tractor pull.

Both Evan and Terry drove.  Terry had the 530 JD and Evan drove the 730 JD.

The pull was based on how much weight the tractor could pull, Terry did 170% of his tractors’ weight

and Evan did 174%. 

No I don’t know what the tractor weighed.  My job is to sit there and film the pull and remember the weight.  The rest is up to them.   :)   Works for me!  I just have to remember to switch from video to still and sometimes I don’t get that part right.

Sometimes people get weirded out that farmers waste water, but water is never wasted. (as far as I know).

After we put the water through our fields the water goes back into the canal; rushing to the next farm down the way.  This is the main artery head gate at the end of our place. 

The canal divides the water to go under the road to next set of farms and down the hill to a whole different set of farm.  These big head gates give me vertigo, so I am grateful I don’t EVER have to do anything with it.

This is a cool photo of ditch foam.  I like to find ditch foam.  It is a rare, but not unusual phenomenon, which occurs when conditions are just right.  I found one awhile back and posted about it here. http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/ditch-foam-happens-once-in-a-great-while/

This photo shows you a head of water let loose and moving quickly.  When you pull up the dam the whole head swooshes down the ditch, so you have to hurry to beat the water to your next set or the water can run over the sides.

Our farm is on a mesa, just above some very interesting canyons.  Last evening we went to Fat Man’s Misery and walked up to Devil’s Kitchen.  The formations here are just amazing.  The last thing you want to happen is to be here when a flash flood occurs.  And they do occur, as you can tell from the standing water.

I am not going to be able to do much posting for a few days now, we have company coming, and a short trip to Dove Creek to visit some friends.  But I will be checking everyone’s blog over this next week, just not planning on doing much posting on mine.

Everything should settle itself down after the 4^th of July and return to normal.

Have a nice week and really good 4^th of July!

The farming neighbor next to us grows sweet corn, called Olathe Sweet-Sweet Corn, for America’s adoring population of sweet corn eaters. It is a patented “delicious sweet corn watered with melted snow” so the advertising states.

To keep the sweet corn free of corn ear worms (people don’t like to see worms in their corn) pheromone traps are hung throughout the fields to capture the egg-laying earworm moths and prevent them from producing.

Corn ear worms are 1- to 2-inch caterpillars that are green, yellow, pink or brown with a white stripe and black legs. They pupate into tan-colored moths with a 1 1/2- to 2-inch wingspan.

As the larvae mature, they continue to feed on the corncob and work their way down the ear. As the corn itself matures, a second-generation infestation of corn earworm occurs as the larvae travel down the silk vein into the maturing cob where more significant crop damage occurs. The corn earworms even eat one another, normally leaving one corn earworm per cob until it eats its way out by eating a hole through the husk.

As a side note earworm pupae, which live in the ground can cause re-infestation in the spring.  Sweet corn fields are plowed as soon as harvest is over.

Anyway, we are now seeing the pheromone traps hanging on fence-lines identifying sweet corn fields across our mesa.

I’ve had people asking questions about our train ride, so I thought I would answer this way.

The train was a promotional train for Operation Lifesaver.  Operation Lifesaver is an educational program taught on the train to eliminate collisions, deaths, and injuries at highway-rail intersections and on railroad rights-of-way.

The ride is scheduled to take one hour to a destination and one hour back to the load-out zone.  Tickets were free, but you had to hurry to get your name on the list, all four cars were packed with people.  The train loaded and started up the track at 8:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 3:30 p.m. (the one we rode), and 6:00 p.m. (this one went to Grand Junction.

All but the 6:00 train was scheduled to go to Paonia, Colorado, which took one hour, all trains made it to Paonia, but the afternoon train.  Because we have three large (huge, very big) coal mines just above Paonia in the Somerset area, the afternoon train had to make way for the coal trains.  The coal trains have/had priority.  So the afternoon trains just went to Hotchkiss and sat on the track until the coal train went by.

The passenger cars were all 1940 plush cars, one with a dome.  Everyone wanted to sit in the dome, but no one got to.  All four cars were completely full, 2 to a seat.  On the evening train to Grand Junction, only people enough to fill the dome car rode.  These people had ‘special tickets’.   Next year I want a special ticket!

I, personally, enjoyed the ride.  The train’s top speed was 45 miles an hour, because of the huge grades they had to pull, sometimes slowing to 25 miles an hour.  To get to Hotchkiss from Delta, by car is only 25 minutes.

I travel that road many times a week.  But to be on the train, going through a different area than the highway was really special!

I have always wanted to take a train ride and now I got too.

This past week has been busy.  A farming neighbor, two farms away had a farm sale;

They are moving to Las Vegas, Nevada.  

The last of the hay was baled and stacked

We went to an antique tractor auction

We took Evan and his son (our oldest grandchild) on a train ride

In between all of this the house and yard work continued, irrigation and cultivating went on, and the SUN came out plus the wind went away.

Ahhh, life is good!

We are still having rain and thunderstorms, but oh, my!  The double rainbow experience is just amazing! This one showed up at our daughter’s house.  I had my trusty camera ready (again) so now you can enjoy it with me.

The corn is doing well; too tall now to cultivate.  And the rain has stopped.  Well, it has moved to the mountains surrounding us, we are only experiencing heavy afternoon winds.  Lots of sun!

Life is good.