00:00 What adaptations and adjustments are you going to make when the weather does not cooperate? That's the topic today with temple 00:06 roads. Welcome to extreme AGS cutting the curved podcast where you get a guaranteed return on investment 00:15 of your time as we cut your learning curve with the information. You can apply to your farming operation immediately extreme AG, we've already 00:24 made the mistakes so you don't have to managing your Farms Water Resources is a critical component to a successful and sustainable farming operation Advanced 00:34 Drainage Systems helps Farmers, just like you increase their yields up to 30% with their technologically advanced Water Management products visit 00:44 ads pipe.com to see how they can keep your business flowing. Now, here's your host Damien Mason. Hey there 00:54 welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ice cutting the curve. I got Temple roads on here and I asked him a question. I said, hey you're 01:00 having a bad spring. We're recording this first week of May and he says name in we've just gotten six inches of rain. He says I'm at least a week out and you know, a lot of it stays 01:09 cold and we keep getting this rain. Then I'm gonna be another week out after that. I've got to start looking at adjustments. I'm going to make because this 01:15 is not the same thing. I planned for a month ago. You might have the same issue. Let's face it spring is 01:21 always a difficult and challenging time or generally has been a lot of you know with the weather throws a lot of curveballs at you. So what adjustments 01:28 do you make because the corner of the soybeans you're planting May 20th, very likely have a different 01:34 set of needs then the corner so it means you're planning May first or certainly April 15th. This is the reality of 01:41 farming. You've got to be nimble. You've got to be adaptable. You've got to make adjustments Temple. Is that guy? All right, Temple you 01:47 even told me. Amen. This is this is I'm a little stressed. But also I Be making a bunch of adjustments first thing you do when all the sudden the weather shuts you 01:54 down. You told me before we hit record. You got most of your stuff planted but there's 750 Acres that are still untouched. You don't want to screw those 02:03 up 750 acres is nothing to write off, you know, if it was like three acres in a low field. Yeah, you know what it might just be wildlife 02:09 habitat 750 acres is a lot. You've got that much yet to go. Tell me what you did first when you said the weathering working out. 02:17 So the first thing that we do is when the weather turns bad on us, we we pull the Planters in we take them back to the 02:24 shop and we go from with a fine too coming because that last little bit of Acres that we're doing um is usually for me. 02:31 My irrigated so that's where majority of my focus is. You know what I'm not saying that we can make mistakes on our dry land but we try to pound in 02:40 our dry land get it done get it up get it going and then we try to pay a little bit more of tension to detail on our irrigator crowd. 02:49 So, you know planners are back in the shop. We're going back over them with a fine tooth comb try to fix every problem on them. So then that way when we get back in the field we can 02:58 we can go and we can get it in in a timely manner. So the other thing yeah, let's talk about the planners first off. So you're bringing the Planters and say all 03:08 right. They've already been through a bunch of Diego the bulkier Acres, you know, whatever three quarters four fifths whatever but that doesn't 03:14 mean that you can say oh, well, we're going to just there's no reason to just patch it along because you maybe have a week. 03:21 So in that week's time. Are you fixing stuff that maybe got broke or you gonna read arrange or change any of the Precision aspect? 03:31 Of because now you're going into a little different soil conditions and a little different temperature conditions and timing. Those are you 03:37 changing the depth of Steed? Are you changing the way you apply stuff anything? Are you making any fundamental changes to the planter setup? 03:45 Sure, so we I mean, we're not really making fundamental changes. I mean maybe we found something that 03:51 we've been limping along with I'll give you for instance. So a lot of different mixes that we're 03:57 using we're having a little bit of trouble with you know, or stainless steel orifice disc right that we we pump 04:04 fertilizer through so we You know, I struggle with mine Alexander struggled with his so what we did was is I said, we're not doing this anymore. 04:14 We pulled the stainless steel disc out. So yes, I am doing some retrofitting there or using the orifice tube where it's the whole size 04:23 is bigger. So we're using that right now, we change one of the planners over that because one planter wasn't having trouble with it. So we change one over. So here's a 04:32 thing that's correcting a problem. It's not necessarily seasoned specific. You just said, I'm sure you buy sitting there getting through a bunch of your Acres saying, you know, 04:42 if we get a rain out we're gonna change wasn't point. It wasn't because we're now two weeks later and there's that change that's a that's a correcting a problem. Are there 04:52 any change you make because we're heading into different soil conditions and timing, you know, I'm thinking I remember the old 04:58 Story the guy down the road that you know, the season was shaping up like, you know, the summer thirty six, so he remembered that year a planet stuff. 05:08 Birdie changes population and this is you know, going back a while. In other words. He was going on his historic memory 05:14 of when yours were like this. Here's what I wish I had done. Do you do any of that? I mean sure it all plays role but it's more of you know, 05:25 we just kind of going over the Planters with a fine to come making sure that we're gonna get through changing whatever needs to be changed on 05:31 whether it be a bearing or something that's got a little more aware than not that more. So what we're 05:37 trying to do is like we're worried about like am I ready for the next step? Like am I ready to you know, let's talk 05:47 about two different things. So let's talk about the cornets in the ground and the beans that they're in the ground and that 05:53 that they're up and they're running. So we've got a crop that we need to worry about. So what stresses is that crop goes through one and in 06:02 my ready for it. Do I have all of the whether it be micronutrients or fungicides or pgr or whatever it may, you 06:13 know, some kind of stress mitigation products. Do I have all that stuff in stock? Let me think about that. Let's see how many acres we've got and let's 06:23 see what we're going to need to do. I'm combining all of that with watching the weather like okay, we know we had this rain event, it's cool. It's wet those plants 06:34 are going to struggle right? So we want to make sure that we get them out of whatever Funk that they're in but then 06:40 when you take the next step like I'm looking, you know, let's say that three days from now, I'm ready to plant. I'm looking at the 15-day forecast things starting to warm 06:50 up a little bit. Well a lot of things that I put in Furrow or in my tuba to when we were planting 06:57 an early April, I'm not necessarily going to need them as bad. You know, I'm I'm 07:04 I expect a couple of things in early April I expect cold weather. I expect wet and I 07:11 expect planes to struggle. So there'll be some things that I put in there whether it be a micro packed PG or whatever it is. I'll put 07:21 things in that that I know for a fact that I'm gonna you know, 90% of the time I'm gonna have trouble with now if the forecast out, you 07:31 know, 15 days from now when I'm getting ready to drop the players back in the ground, if it looks like we're gonna have, you 07:37 know, really warm temperatures and grounds gonna dry out there would be some things that I pull back from that because I know I'm not going to get a return 07:46 on that investment. So why put it out there so really are we talking like Stuff that is that helps. I'm getting 07:56 some stress mitigation when it's going in early and you're like this seed might lay around and cool moist wet soil for a long time. That's where the stress mitigation products 08:06 matter and you're saying up all the sudden. It's third week of May when you're planting this last part of your farm. You can just back off of some of those because it shouldn't be 08:15 stressed at early stages. Exactly. So let me give you for instance. So when it's cold with that and you know, it's disease it's 08:26 going to be disease prone, you know, you're prone to get all these diseases in it. So I'll put in you know, let's use pre-ax 08:32 or for instance so I know cold wet temperatures, you know, we're gonna have some fusariums some pythium. So I'll put you know 08:42 a fungicide in that take care of that specific problem. Well from going here forward. I know that the temperatures are supposed to warm up after this weekend and 08:52 it looks like we got a really good stand of weather. I can pull back from that. I don't need that. You know, we also feed a tone of magnesium and 09:02 manganese in there those two things. Um, I'm not gonna say I've said it before but I'm not gonna say it's sunlight in a joke, but it does help 09:12 the plant at an early stage, you know, I won't need that as much in late May. 09:19 Did in early April so some of these things I can pull back from and then there'll be some other things that I might up. I might increase, you know, so it's 09:29 kind of a juggling act and it's really about watching the weather and seeing what what's coming up next, you know you and I talked about it many many 09:38 times, you know about being proactive versus reactive. This is me trying to be proactive. 09:45 So you bring in the planners and go through those sometimes it's making a few little tweaks that is going to be because your 09:52 season has changed and oftentimes. It's fixing the thing that maybe was a little bit off during the early season. So it's 09:58 kind of an it's actually a welcome reprieve. A weather break is a welcome reprieve for that reason, you know damn if I have a weather weather stall I'm gonna build 10:07 correct some of these problems so it helps you there. But then also each day that it's stays wet and you're 10:13 not getting those scraps done. Do you get do you get stressed? Oh, yeah, I'm absolutely freaking out. So I mean 10:20 I'll give you like my biggest stress period is this so planar sat still for four or five days because there was two 10:29 weather forecast out there, right? So the warm weather forecast that they were calling this was right prior to this big rain. We 10:35 got one was a half an inch to an inch to ring which I'm not scared of I would plant it right up, you know to a day ahead of it. 10:44 But then they started talking about you know, temperatures are going to drop and then that scared me a little bit and then the very next forecast that 10:51 was coming out and they were kind of going back and forth that we could see cool weather on top of three to 10:58 five inches of rain and that scared the hell out of me. Yeah. So we stopped the planer stopped we brought them back put them in the shop and the most stressful time 11:07 that I had was those four days. It was the most beautiful days to plant then the entire year. There was just enough moisture in the ground ground was 11:17 worked up. It was pretty I mean we could have went in there and just I mean floated them through there it would have been awesome. But if 11:27 we ended up getting six inches of rain, so we made the right move and I'm you know, I went and looked at corn this morning and beans, you know, everything that 11:36 we playing it. It's all spiking through so I'm happy with what we did. Yeah, you just Dress came in that you're like I pulled off based on what was coming, but 11:48 we don't it's not a guarantee that it's coming. So then you're hanging around saying well I pulled off because I didn't 11:54 want to plant into six inch rain event, but it wasn't just a half a day. You pulled off several days 12:00 and you you're sitting there stressing about lost productivity. Yeah, so I mean in all of us, do you know I would love to be planted up 12:08 in in April in the first part of May but it's not gonna happen for us this year, you know, but you can't throw good money at bad money, you know, so you just you have 12:17 to make the best decision that you have like, you know, and just and if I and if I lost on this deal which I've lost on this before where we've set back and you know and 12:27 and held up held up held up and we didn't plant and other guys were planting and we only called a half an answering and that crap. There's look 12:37 beautiful and I was like, oh now I'm eating further behind, you know, so I'm like two weeks out behind. So yeah, it stresses me out, but you can 12:46 only do the best that you can do with the information that you have at your hands. Here's the thing that past 12:53 the stress. Um, you hit the panic button. I mean, I know that, you know growing up there'll be times when it never got dry. So then you know, literally they're mudding in a 13:02 crop. Looking back. I think that's probably a pretty bad decision. Do you do you ever hit a panic time where it's like it don't matter 13:10 we're gonna get this done. Sure, that's when you need to join a support group like extreme AG because I can't tell you 13:19 how many guys in the Stream mag. I called and said man. I'm sitting on the sideline. Am I making a mistake and they all 13:26 like they want they taught me all the fence because I was in straight panic mode. Yeah until I started calling them. 13:32 They're like man you you're doing the best you can do like take a chill pill and it's hard to do. 13:38 by the way You and me are not what you'd call chill pill types. We're kind of high energy. We run kind of hot. You know 13:47 that four days probably felt like a year because I know that's how it would be for me. Answer me this then. 13:56 To change up you've already decided you're gonna reduce some of the products. Are there other products you're going to add because of what the conditions 14:02 look like. In other words you backed off on a couple things thinking you don't need it because by the time this what time 14:08 it's go time again, you will have a different set of soil conditions that maybe you don't need some of the stress, you know stress mitigation products. Whatever. Do you 14:18 add anything. Is there anything that gets added for later planting then you would have used 14:24 I don't really add anything. I might just take away because like that early season deal for us. That's where it is packed with 14:34 everything because I'm trying to alleviate every problem that I know that I'm gonna have. I really 14:40 just take away my next decision in you know in this time frame that we got this going on. Remember I talked about, you know, we have a growing crop out there and 14:50 I need to worry about that as well. So some of my focus goes to there, you know, you know one, you know, 14:56 like I said, did we stop and in time of the rain event to what am I gonna be putting in that next 15:02 pay us to try to be proactive instead of reactive, you know our next side dress pants or my next herbicide Pious that might have some foliers 15:12 in it, you know, great time for a product like, you know, you just mentioned it there more, you know on our herbicide Pace. We'll probably 15:21 add something like that. Leave a little bit of that stress because that plant that's out there growing right now. It's in a huge amount of stress because it's 15:30 going from a Seedling where it's sucking all of its energy off the sea where it's going to turn into Roots where it's going to try to get all the energy out of 15:40 the root system and it's gonna suck in something else. So it goes through a little Funk there anyway, 15:47 Need to figure out how to leave alleviate that stress before it starts going through it. Okay, what practices I'm just kind of think of 15:57 some examples here. I've I've been involved in Neighbor Farmers guys. I keep up with that. I've helped. 16:03 Season got long because of weather problems. They had no intention of doing a tillage pass. But by 16:10 the time they got in Weeds were a problem prohibitive problem because it was three weeks later than they anticipated getting in the field and then they had 16:19 to actually scramble do some spring tillage. Is there anything like that from a practice standpoint that you've ever had to change? Oh, yeah. 16:29 So you'll get into a situation out here, you know, I do it, you know other guys do it, you know, you just can't get ground quite right to get you 16:38 back in the field and getting going, you know, and people use these vertical tillage tools where they go out there and they kind 16:44 of break the crust off at you know, you know an inch deep inch and a half deep, you know, sometimes two inches deep and they do a really good job of drying out the 16:54 ground but you you can't beat Mother Nature, right? And I'm not saying it vertical tillage tools don't have their place, but our 17:03 problem is me especially I get in such a big rush. I overlook the little things and when you go out there and 17:13 you run a vertical tillage to even though you're only going to inch and have deeper whatever you're not doing a lot of tillage you just 17:20 ate it compassion to your to your ground. Yes the top one inch and a half is really really you know it you fluffed it up you 17:28 Up, you dried it out and that's all great. But you just ran this really heavy piece of Machinery, which are big 17:35 tracker across the field high horsepower because we're all pulling them, you know ten miles an hour very much done, you know and it oh, there's a fuel 17:44 card at 10 mile an hour. Yeah, by the way, there's a fuel component and there's a time value of money component, but 17:51 the other part of it is I I'm glad you answered that way. I'm I'm of the camp that we still do 17:57 too much tillage in North American Agriculture and and that's you know, there's gonna be people that disagree with it and they're saying hey man, you're the host. You're not the farmer. Okay fine, that's 18:06 fine. But I do know this I read something really funny. It was from more of a soil person said, you know, we used to call vertical tillage. 18:14 An inline disc what's the worst piece of equipment for compaction a disc? And you know, I remember when I was in soil judging 18:20 back in the 1980s. First thing they do and to build a highway is bring in a big offset disc. So, you know, if you want to pack down something like 18:28 a Highway Star or the disk, so I agree that so you telling me that you even if the soil conditions need something 18:34 you don't think that going out there and running a piece of equipment 10 miles an hour. That's essentially just a a light disking is the 18:44 way to go. No, I mean vertical tillage tools are just yeah, I've met like I said I've made this mistake. I've ate a compassion to 18:52 my soul. I've seen the problems. I've tried to get past them. Nothing beats. Waiting on Mother Nature. You can't beat her. 19:02 We've seen it too many times and what we have what if what if we do have In the next two weeks, it's warm enough and 19:11 it certainly wet enough and you have just an amazing amount of weed and vegetation problem. Do you just drag the planter through that weed and vegetation problem. Then you're saying 19:20 I think yeah you do. You know everybody is got good new till um setups on their planner. So I will I'm not 19:30 gonna go out there and make that terrible to pay us a vertical till past whatever you want to call it. I'm gonna go out there and I'm 19:36 gonna put my real cleaners down and I'm gonna let them do their work and I'm gonna deal with the problem that I have, you know. 19:42 Vertical tillage tools are very very good at get helping get rid of some residue and mix some residue in the ground. They're not made to dry ground 19:52 out and get you in the field faster. But we've all done it. I the worst one for it. So right um, and you don't anymore so you learn from it and that's where we have your own here. 20:02 Okay. So other practices I'm just thinking do you do you then change planting depth? Do you set up the planter in 20:12 any way different? I know ask that before. I mean if it gets to be, you know two weeks from now what you think is already, 20:18 you know now go time. You're two weeks past prime. Is there anything you you're changing way of the planting practice? All planning practices are changed in the field 20:28 as we're going. You don't mean like let's let's take for instance. I'm trying to plant two inches deep, maybe two and a quarter inches deep if 20:34 it gets drier and you know the conditions for the next 10 to 15 days look really really favorable. 20:43 I might drop it down a little bit deeper if the conditions while we're in there planning looks like you know five days 20:50 out six days out we could get a really big rain event. I might shower it up to an inch and three quarters, you know, I might take some pressure off of 20:59 the planer. I might take some pressure off the clothes room Wheels, there's numbers numerous things that we're gonna do and we're always adjusting that but we're 21:09 only gonna make those adjustments while we're in the door, right? I got it. So let's just I know we're saying hypothetical because right now 21:15 the reason you're on here recording is because you have you have time if you were the weather was ideal you'd say Damien. I'll talk 21:21 to you later. Um, Population do you do you change population as we get later in the season? I'm assuming yes. 21:30 I I do somewhat I don't do a lot of that. I do more that and soybeans than I do in corn. Um, our corn acres are kind of our corn Acres, you know 21:40 our dry land we back those numbers down because we know that we're going to deal with heat. We know we're gonna deal with drought out here where we are cc's are really low or 21:50 organic matters low. So at any given day we're three to five days away from our worst drought ever, right? So that's our dry land our irrigated 21:59 ground. We we do fairly well with that so our population stay high on that so we're somewhere between you know, 375 and 42,000 plans 22:11 for acre. So we kind of put but that we can't really go over that. I tried to go over that and and there's just no return on that investment. So we 22:20 try you're saying as the season gets later you would consider adding more but there's no payoff for doing so Yeah, um, you would increase the population. I just 22:30 I just increased population on irrigated. I don't increase it on anything else you like my dry land 22:36 we treat one way or the irrigated we treat another way dry land always gets planted first. You're getting it gets playing at last because that's 22:43 where our biggest bang for a buck has soybeans are very different way. So let's go back to that question right here you save you're in a lot of people don't have irrigation. I think I read 22:53 a stat like 20 20% of the acres are irrigated. Well, obviously when you start thinking about places where they they would have to have irrigation you Western Kansas, whatever you're part 23:02 of the world. You don't have you probably are right there, but 20% of your acres are good. 23:09 Um, we're probably a little head. Well, yeah, that's probably about a rate for us the further east you go 23:15 away from me the more and more it becomes guys over that way. There's a lot of guys over there that are almost 100% irrigated, but we need it. Yeah. So when the thing 23:25 about you you save your irrigated acres for last and is that because you think if they get planted late the irrigation will make up for the season 23:36 and and still give you a big yield. That's that's one of the things and I want to make sure that I'll get every last seed out of the ground perfectly. So 23:47 I look for that absolute perfect window and till I move the Planters in the irrigated ground. So that's what so just imagine like Kelly's 23:56 out there and ice cream state. So he's he's got good ground. He's gonna push his potential because he knows he can he's got a tremendous amount of potential. 24:05 That's how we treat our irrigated our dry land farms. We just don't have the potential there because we know we're going to go through, you know, a fair amount of 24:15 heat, but most certainly, you know, a drought of some sort and we just don't have the potential there. What product have you added in the 24:26 last couple of years specifically because of these situations specifically like you like? Hey, the one thing that I never used to do and if I'm going in late 24:36 because the weather's shut my planners down. I'm gonna be sure as heck to use this anything. 24:42 I will share attacked always use pgr's infero and in my first herbicide pass hands down every time because I need that thing rocking and 24:55 rolling. It's harder regulator because it it's the benefit is root development. 25:02 Yep, exactly. Yeah, is there anything else now when we're titling this adapting when weather shuts the planter down we talked about you happen 25:12 to have your support group. So that's the mental and you know part of it you talk about bringing the planners into the shop and doing them 25:18 one, you know, fine the fine tooth comb he talked about looking at the products that you're not going You're Gonna remove from the mix as we get later in the season a population. 25:28 You said remains roughly the same and in you just talked about the products that absolutely go in there. They're important early season. They're even more important late 25:38 season like a plant growth regulator. Is there anything else about adapting to when the weather shuts your planet down? 25:45 I think that's about got it covered Damien. What a great deal. All right, his name is Temple roads, he's awesome. He's he's an eastern shore of Maryland kind of 25:55 a farmer. I'm gonna be at his place August 22nd, August 22nd, is this field day and I'm gonna be there because I haven't been to this 26:01 place yet. Just Chestnut Manor Farms as it is if you want to attend one of our field days, you know, you can you can register we've got one May 10th at Chad Henderson's in 26:11 Alabama. We've got one in Iowa at Kelly Garrett's on June 22 and we got the one in Maryland with Mr. Temple here. 26:20 If you want to take your learning to the next level. Remember, you can become a member where you get invited to a monthly webinar the 26:27 extreme AG has we go end up with discussion and questions. You can ask and I'll see you access to video that 26:34 nobody else sees That's becoming an extreme mag member it's only 750 dollars a year. It's very very cheap and easy and you'll get that much 26:42 reward and value out for sure. Stay tuned share this with somebody can benefit from it. And if this season is working against you now, you've got some strategy and some 26:51 ideas from Mr. Temple roads on how you adapt when the weather shut down your planter. Thanks for being here, buddy. 26:59 Appreciate it buddy till next time I'm David Mason with extreme ice cutting that's a wrap for this episode of cutting the curve, 27:05 but there's plenty more check out extremead.farm where you can find past episodes instructional videos and articles to help you squeeze more profit out of 27:16 your farm cutting. The curve is brought to you by Advanced Drainage Systems the leader in agriculture 27:22 Water Management Solutions.