Fall Waterway Construction Project

Controlling water runoff on rolling farmland can be a big job.  No-Till planting helps slow water down but there are still natural drains that can become overloaded during heavy rain events.  When these areas collect water and get full too quickly soil loss or "erosion" occurs in those areas.  The way to lessen the effect of moving water is to widen these areas and create a slope or "gradient" that lets the water flow down hill, but more slowly. 

Gary Lillard,  from the Simpson County Soil Conservation District, is pictured here calculating the slope in the waterway using a laser to pinpoint the grade.

A rock structure was needed in this waterway to help slow the water flow down as the drain makes a large drop in elevation.  The rock structure is used so we didn't have to cut as much dirt out for such a long distance in the rest of the waterway.

Jackson Excavating performed the dirt work for this project.  Chad Jackson's guys worked well with the Soil Conservation service to get the job done right.

This project actually went across 2 farms.  you can see we had soybeans in the field pictured above and corn in the field pictured below. 

Marsha Marklin assisting Gary Lillard in getting the grade right for the rock structure.

After the waterway is built and sowed down in grass we installed straw erosion control mats to help hold the topsoil down while the grass gets established this winter.  You may have seen these same kind of mats on roadside projects as well.  This is a big job rolling them out and driving metal staples into the ground to hold them down.  This waterway was about 1/2 of a mile long.

The finished product.

"A time to Sow" - 95% of the winter grain crop is in the ground.

Happy Halloween from the Jepson Boys!

I had a couple of early trick or treaters the other evening sowing wheat.  They brought me a snack and the treat of spending time with my favorite little boys.  They love riding in the tractor.  It doesn't take long until they are asleep though!

The continued wet weather pattern has narrowed our planting window for wheat.  Auto steer really helps during long days and nights.

No-Tilling wheat directly into standing corn residue with a 35' air seeder.

Loading seed into the air drill.  It holds 220 bushels of seed.  It will plant about 90 acres to the fill up.

Chris Marklin drilling barley with the 30' box drill.  The barley will be sold for feed rations for livestock.  The no-till coulters work the ground in front of the double disc seed openers that place the seed into the seed bed.

The first wheat we planted has come up and is looking good!  It always make us feel good to see the fruits of our labor when our crops start coming out of the ground.  The Fall of the year is a time to harvest and a time to sow.

Airplane cover crop application causes strange looks in the neighborhood!

I had many calls from neighbors a couple of weeks ago when were having cover crop seed flown on over soybeans.  A yellow bi-plane stands out zooming up and down over the fields.  The pilot put on quite a show!

We were dropping cereal rye, crimson clover and tillage radishes into the standing soybean crop.   The idea is the seeds will germinate as the leaves drop off the soybeans as they mature.

These cover crops will serve a dual purpose.  They will help hold the soil down this winter during rain events to prevent erosion.  They will also serve as nutrient scavengers and prevent loss of nutrients in our soil.  The soil nutrients that are left from the soybean crop will be locked up in the cover crop plants.  We will spray and kill the cover crop in the early spring before we plant corn.  As the plant material breaks down and rots away it will make the nutrients they took up available for our corn crop next spring. 

When I asked one of our team members if he would like to be in the plane with the pilot his reply was "It would sure be better than being up there without him!"

Our soybean crop is quickly maturing and looks to have excellent yield potential.

Photo credits to Brian McCord/Journal Communications
www.TNagriculture.com

Tobacco Firing and curing is almost done

Dark Air Cured tobacco, also known as "one-sucker" locally, curing in a barn.

A barn of Dark Fired tobacco being prepared to fire cure.

Firing tobacco is equal parts know-how, tradition and luck.

The fires are lit all over the barn and usually will burn for a week or so depending on the condition of the tobacco.

The tobacco has a dark finish on it after we fire it 3 times.

Dark tobacco is used to produce smokeless tobacco products such as Skoal and Copenhagen.

The finished product being graded according to stalk position.

The tobacco is bundled into "flakes" and placed on a hogs head barrel top for storage and transport.  At this point there have been many man hours put into the crop and all the hard work and attention to detail is close to paying off!

Each pile or "basket" is labeled according to the grade of tobacco.

20,000 lbs of Dark Fired Tobacco prepared for market in a semi van trailer.
Photo credits to Brian McCord/Journal Communications
www.TNagriculture.com

Fall is just around the corner when the combine starts to roll.

Ample rainfall and cool temps were the perfect combination for our corn crop this year.  Early harvest results point to a great fall harvest.

Special thanks to Elbia Link for helping field start the combine for corn harvest.

William and Elbia making the initial settings on the combine for corn shelling.

Sherman Marklin unloading the first load of the 2013 corn crop

Corn still has moisture in it (low 20% range) and will have to be ran through the dryer before it can be delivered to the elevator at 15.5% moisture.

A beautiful harvest sunset view.

David Brown shelling corn.

Randy Barton loading a truck for Chris Marklin to haul to the bins.