The weather of the last few days makes me think spring has arrived for real. The past 10 days have seen rain in generous amounts, easing my fears of an early long lasting drouth, and moving them to a regular old July and August drouth prediction. Corn planters have stayed in the shed, and seed corn in the bag. It is raining tonight, but the week ahead is forecast to be dry. Without knowing how much it has rained, I would guess perhaps we could get in the field by Thursday if we get the temps forecasted, in the high 70s and low 80s. Our vegetable garden is showing signs of life, with the taters coming up, and the radishes, carrots, spinach and parsnips all emerged.
Although most grass leases have started, save the few that begin on May 1, there is for all practical purposed no grass to go to thanks to our cold weather of late. Most pastures are either brown or black right now, with just a few cool season pastures bright green. Our warm season grasses need nights that don't fall below 50 to grow at all, and really need nights of 60F+ to grow well. For most, calving is winding down. I sold 66 head of steers and heifers Thursday with the steers averaging 755 pounds at $1.01 per pound, and heifers 680 at $.9610 per pound. This is about $.15 per pound less than this time last year.
There is concern about freeze damage in some Kansas wheat, our 10pm newscast had that as one of the lead stories(go to www.kwch.com ). There is also a saying that wheat gets killed 3 times before harvest, so time will tell how much damage is really out there.
After so many cold windy days, yesterday yielded winds of the right speed and direction for me to burn some of my pasture, aided by a strip burned through the middle of the 320 acre tract from a fire that jumped the highway last week. It took much longer than I thought it would to fire guard around buildings and neighboring property, we started our backfires at 4pm and got done at 11pm. I have posted pics in my gallery that I think are pretty good, if I do say so myself.