Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I'm Getting Back to Farming

Well, now that we're in the process of moving, my mind is headed towards spring. Our soybean seed was delivered last week, the corn is coming next Tuesday, and I had a growers meeting for some high amylose corn this morning. High amylose corn is a specialty corn that is used in a lot of the food you eat, but is also used in plastics and adhesives.

It's boring, but it's my life (If you got this reference, you are my kind of people. If not, I still like you).

I'll write more about high amylose corn at another time. Honestly, I've never grown it before, so you'll be with me for the learning curve. It's kind of a long story, but this stuff used to be grown around Indianapolis. They're moving production this-a-way. Dad and I were asked to grow some, so he's growing 50 acres, and I'm going to grow 40.

This is all getting to my point.

High amylose corn, at present, is only available in conventional form. This, of course, means we can't use Roundup to control weeds. The problem with this is that the company that does our spraying sprays a lot of Roundup. When you spray crops that are not Roundup Ready, you need to be dang sure you got all of it out of your tank, otherwise you risk killing your crop.

So, I'm on the lookout for a sprayer. Probably something like this:






I've been wanting one for a few years, but didn't know if we would have time to spray. I'm going to have to make time now, because this high amylose corn is too valuable to risk losing due to someone not taking time to properly clean out their tank. Now, if the corn dies because it got sprayed with something it shouldn't have, it's my fault. If I get one bought anytime soon, I'll post some pictures.

2 comments:

  1. Are you concerned about drift, or have you found a good spot to plant the amylose corn? I've seen tomato plants after getting hit from drift, and it's hard for them to recover.

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    1. I'm not too worried about it. The neighbor next to that field is a good guy. I'm just going to tell him what it is, and I'm sure when he sprays his corn, he'll take care to not drift. My other neighbor is... me. So, I think it'll be ok. We're not supposed to spray on windy days, anyway!

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