"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