Brrrr! It's Cold Outside!

We woke up this morning to single digit temperatures and 10-20 mph winds with wind chills around -15F!  I feel for our neighbors who have livestock to tend to.  It was a big job preparing for this colder than normal weather.  We took extra steps winterizing the sprayer and water hydrants around the farms and our homes.

I captured this sunset the other day.  The days are shorter and colder but we are still very busy on the farm.  We have finished soybean harvest and delivered all the tobacco.  We are in the middle of mountains of paper with W2's and tax planning.  We have been looking at crop budgets for 2014 and it will soon be time to begin the process and paperwork of securing our temporary H2A worker visas for 2014.  Our local fertilizer dealers have been grid sampling all of the corn ground and we are putting finishing touches on the recommendations and grid specific prescriptions for fertilizer applications.  I have included a few photos below of some of the work that has gone on during the last month.

We have been busy hauling soybeans to the River Terminal in Clarksville, TN.  The beans will hit the river and float on a barge down the Cumberland River to the Mississippi and make their way to the Gulf of Mexico.  Soybeans go all over the world from the Gulf.  China is a large importer of American soybeans.  It will take a few months for the soybeans to make their way from our fields to the export markets all around the world.

A couple of weeks ago we had some freezing rain that froze to the power lines.  I had to pull a Cumberland Electric truck out of our field where they had to make a repair to the line.

Last month we held our annual Christmas Party at Yates Cave.  We had over 70 in attendance for our appreciation dinner.

The tobacco crew finished stripping tobacco about a week before Christmas.  they were anxious to make it home to see family and friends for the holidays.  Some of our employees had not been home since the last of April! 



Some of our men taking down the last of the tobacco.

We finished soybean harvest the first week of December.  Our neighbor TC Groves came over and helped us finish up.  The wet weather slowed our progress during harvest.  The soybean crop was excellent.



It may be cold outside, but we have plenty to do at year's end and planning for 2014!  Here's to a prosperous New Year for everyone!