No Till Notes: 'Fish and Mud'

Every once in a while I’m fortunate enough to catch a few fish for dinner. I’ve always felt the best way to cook a good batch of pan fish is to fry them up in some hot oil with a good batter on them. My wife Denise will often comment that the house smells like fish after one of my fried fish dinners. I always tell her that a house that smells like fried fish is a good thing.

I’ll also occasionally tromp into the kitchen with mud on my boots. Denise will often point out to me that I could take my boots off outside. I’ll often remind her that mud on the kitchen floor is a good thing. I’m also getting better at taking my boots off outside.

On April 17 I posted on our Panhandle No-till Facebook page that we were finally getting started planting field peas. A farmer friend of mine from central Kansas posted back to me asking if we were too dry to plant. I responded back that we were too wet to plant.

In a very short amount of time I heard back from about 10 other producers around Kansas that said they wish they had our problem of being too wet. Many of the producers in central and western Kansas have suffered through a multi-year drought that is ongoing.

I spoke to Dietrich Kastens, a producer in northwest Kansas, last week and Dietrich told me they had one snow storm in March that left a total of .5 inch of precipitation and that had been the total moisture for the year up to this point. Many of you are familiar with Dietrich as he has spoken at our Panhandle No-till Partnership winter conference on a couple of occasions.

Dietrich told me the only thing preventing a repeat of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was the no-till crop production practices widely adopted in his area. There have still been road closings due to dust storms around the area where some producers have yet to adopt better conservation practices.

I checked back through my precipitation totals on our farm since last September, and we are roughly 4 inches above normal for the September- through May time period. According to my records we have received 12.41 inches of precipitation during this time and the average precipitation is 8.43. We still have half of May to add to these totals. We have also received almost 5 inches of precipitation in the last two weeks. Needless to say, we’re wet.

The concern now is getting the corn crop planted. There is a good chance of more moisture over the next 10 days according to the forecasts. We’ve always managed to get the crops planted, but it does make for some anxious moments when the crops aren’t in the ground in a timely manner.

We should feel very fortunate that we are able to track some mud in the house. Many producers to our south would love to have our problem. I’ve always felt that drought makes a hail storm look good. Suffering through a prolonged drought really wears on a community as it seems like it will never rain enough to get out of the drought. Hopefully the producers to our south will get some much needed relief in the near future.