I have a couple of good farming friends who more often than not I talk with at least every other day on the cell phone. We were in agreement all winter that there was no way we could have 3 abnormally wet springs in a row. This is Kansas, we are a drouth prone state,usually we need rain....no way would '09 be wet. Well, we were wrong. At first it didn't look that way, after all we lived through March under extreme fire weather nearly every day. The first of April was cold and dry, all looked in line to get in the field in a timely manner. My corn ground was fertilized and worked down like a garden, ready to plant, then, the rains came. They weren't just our ordinary spring rains either, they were big, hard rains. My new norm is 3+ inches at a time, the faster the better. I quit keeping track, but I guess for the last two months we are nearing 20 inches on this farm, much of it coming in increments of an inch or more an hour, one morning we got in excess of 3 inches in just over an hour. I finally got the corn planted the end of May, just about one month later than I like. I did get a perfect stand, except in the low places that drowned out. I got some soybeans planted then too, because I hired a friend to plant some while I was planting corn. All in all I guess I had about 5 good running days in May, then the calender turned to June. Nothing changed, it kept raining. Two weeks ago tomorrow I got a good day in drilling soybeans, only to have a hard, 3 inch rain that night crust them under. Then last Friday and Saturday I had a good run, I stopped Sunday because of an 80% chance of heavy rain, I really didn't want any more crusted under than I already had...when it didn't rain Sunday night, I headed to the field on Monday and planted just a few acres then quit again because of the weather forecast.
By 6pm Monday evening the weather looked very bad, a little after 6 the Sheriff called to inform me a deputy was watching a tornado on the ground just crossing the county line, and if all things held together it would hit our area and for us to be ready to deploy spotters. We deployed about 8pm and shortly thereafter our immediate area was put in a tornado warning. Our new remote controlled siren was activated by the Sheriff, problem was it gave the fire sounding, three successive blasts, our chief protested over the radio it was the wrong signal but I interjected nobody would know the difference anyway, as long as the siren was blowing they would take cover. One other problem came to light(aside from the fact we still could not activate it ourselves remotely) that was when we activated it manually we also were sounding the all clear in a neighboring community. I was spotting with another fellow, our cell phones rang constantly asking what was going on, I guess the siren means call someone you know is busy rather than take cover. The first storm passed with just a funnel and no touchdown in the area. A short debate was held to decide whether we should sound the all clear, we decided it would just lead to more confusion and nothing would be wrong with whoever took cover staying under cover a while longer so we didn't sound it. Another guy had picked me up to spot, on the way home the second storm hit, and hit hard with straight wind, so hard we had to sit on the road with several other vehicles and wait it out. That yielded 2 inches of rain in about an hour and a half. I slept through the next storm that came through at 3am, all neighbors agreed it was the worst, and gave another inch of rain, giving me my standard 3 inch yield. Tuesday morning though it was not the rain that bothered me or the fact the soybeans were now going to crust(although the rain did soften the crust to let the beans from the week before through), what bothered me was all the corn(maize) was laying flat on the ground, very battered. What was amazing was the wheat did not go down, just the corn. It has stood back up, the leaves are rather tattered. I cannot fathom how the yield potential will be the same but time will tell. However, I still have the matter of about 100 acres of soybeans crusted under, and a forecast of temps in the high 90s next week, so, what I want now is a GENTLE quarter inch of rain to soften the crust, then I would very much like 10 days of dry weather, so we can finish planting, and replanting, and haying, and cutting wheat, and maybe if we are lucky put in some soybeans or milo after wheat. We have a 50% chance of rain tomorrow, and guess what, they say it might be heavy.