Big Day

Since I got done using it almost three months ago, I decided today was a good day to put my planter away. My planter doesn't fold and is 25' wide, while my shed doors are about 16' wide. What's a fellow to do? Buy a trailer, that's what. You can chock the wheels on this type of implement trailer, and the deck will roll forward and down to the ground. Back your implement on to it, back the trailer deck up and allow the wheels to roll free and you are good to go. Sounds like it shouldn't take long, but it did. Oh well. Thanks for helping, Dad.

It was really nice out this afternoon, so I walked some fields. Harvest will be interesting. Some stuff looks decent, some looks good, and some pollinated at the wrong time. It was just too darn hot out for some of it. The ears that don't look very good must've pollinated during the hot part of the day. That's a size 11 sandal, in case you were wondering.

This monster was 22 kernels around and 40 long. I don't remember ever pulling one that big, and it was on some of my sandier ground. It was the farthest right ear in the above picture.

This is a more typical size, 16x38:

This is what a lot of people refer to as "tip back" as the ear will abort kernels from the tip of the ear back when the plant is stressed. Basically, the plant is trying to stay alive and is telling the ear that it's going to have to give something up for the cause. It's not a good thing.

The ear in the middle is just plain ugly. You can see that it didn't pollinate very well.

More tip-back. I've seen more ears like this than I really want to admit to myself.

These ears are all the same variety and all came from plants that were within a 10' radius. Pretty weird what weather can do to corn plants. If every ear looked like the one on the right, I would be tickled.

I am thankful that we can irrigate, or else I wouldn't have any ears to pull. I am still optimistic for this harvest, because you never know what God will provide and bless you with. He's taking care of us, so I'll let him worry about it. I'll just keep irrigating until it's time to quit, and then the fun can begin.