about the wind rather than keeping his
eye toward Jesus,” explained Dean. He
compared Peter’s worry about the wind
to his worry about the drought. Peter
took his eye off Jesus and doubted
his safety from the impending storm
and Dean had taken his focus away
from Jesus when he worried about the
drought and the effects that it would
have on his crops. Dean went on to say,
“After that I started focusing on Jesus
and not my worries and doubt.”
Dean made his second planting of
corn in mid-June when it was still very
dry. He chisel-plowed 26 acres and as
Dean put it, “The dust was flyin’.” A
month later, with no rain, his second planting was still under ground.
Finally, on July 17, Shipshewana had
its first good rain in months and Dean’s
corn popped out of the ground.
The Stutzmans’ farm also has 29
acres of alfalfa and as far as how the
drought affected his alfalfa, Dean
added, “We had an early spring this
year. It warmed up to ninety degrees
the first week in March and we had
our first cutting in April.” Dean had
a second cutting in May and then not
another until August, but he described
his April and August cuttings as, “awesome”, and he feels the total tonnage
of hay is going to be about the same as
last year.
At the R.E. Yoder Farm the
drought also made life interesting.
Roger stated, “I’ve never had corn and
everything dry up like it did this year.
Even the pastures dried up.” Roger and
his brother Randy farm 1,400 acres of
land. They planted 750 acres in corn,
500 acres in beans, and split the balance between alfalfa and wheat. Roger
said that they had to chop 130 acres of
corn the last part of August due to the
drought. The 130 acres only produced
about 13 bushels of corn per acre,
which was chopped and used for silage.
Yoder also said that 20 acres of dryland corn produced about 83 bushels
per acre. The most recent statistics
from Yoder are much more impressive.
From his 60 acres of irrigated corn,
Yoder had combined 40 of those acres
and was averaging between 220 and
225 bushels of corn per acre.
One interesting aspect that
occurred this year, which Roger had
never seen before, was the infestation of spider mites. When drought
conditions prevail for a long period
of time and the ditches and pasture
fields dry up, the spider mites look
for green vegetation to feed on. Unfortunately for the Yoders, the prime
target for the spider mites in their
area was the bean fields. Beans are
much more tolerable to drought conditions than corn, but they do not
tolerate an attack of spider mites.
The Yoders sprayed twice for the
mites, but their reproduction cycle
is only ten days, so it’s very hard to
keep up with them.
Nature normally takes care of
the spider mite population with rain
or heavy morning dew. The rain or
morning dew produces a natural fungus that kills the spider mites, but
with drought conditions, there was
massive growth in the spider mite
population. Even with two sprayings,
the Yoders still suffered damage to
their bean crop.
There were a couple of positives
for the Yoders during this drought
year. “We started buying crop insurance a few years ago and this is the
kind of year where it really pays
off,” Roger stated. “The insurance
adjusters have already been out and
we’ll get reimbursed for some of the
drought damaged crop.” Another
positive that has come out of this
abnormal growing season, is the
Yoders’ alfalfa crop. With the unusually warm weather in late winter
and early spring this year, Roger
said that the first cutting of hay was
about a month earlier than normal
which allows for about five cuttings
before the season is over. So, like
Stutzman, the Yoders’ hay harvest
will be comparable to previous years.
Overall, both Dean and Roger
have come through this challenging
growing season in pretty good shape.
Roger concluded, “You take what you
get and go on. When you look at the
big picture, when it comes to farming, a large percent of your success
comes down to Mother Nature.”
We can do
anything
we want as
long as we
stick to it
long enough
— Helen Keller
Come Join our next
Weight Loss Challenge at
505 E North Village Dr. Shipshewana, IN
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