Hetland Seeds Blog & Newsletters
Fall 2011
Its the end of a season on the farm.
I often get asked "Are you busy now that harvest is over?" For those that are farmers that question is always answered with "there is always work to be done, just different projects."
On our farm we had a year of extremes: starting in March/April with questioning which system may be used for seeding : A Valmar or Air drill? We compromised and started the first 15% of our acreage with our Air seeder and as it got dryer we moved to our Air drill. With 38 inches of moisture from 2010, the Summer provided us with a great growing season and a Fall we will always remember .
This harvest enabled us to do a series of field weighs and have a bit of fun with our first Canola Cup challenge.
Our first weigh was on our DeKalb plots we seeded in early May with our air seedier and compared some of DeKalb genetics (www.
Dekalb.ca). We all were surprised with the yield compared with the swath size and from that point on we thought "the big canola crop was achievable" and as we went onward it was!
With the good news of the first canola came the bad news of the peas. We planted 197 acres of Marrowfat green peas. I do not say grew because they did not grow - after receiving 6-7 inches of rain in 10 days, the root rot set in and by June 20 they were toast, netting out at about 6 bus/acre was the worst pea crop I ever was involved with - crop insurance here we come!
As the combines rolled so did the weigh wagon. Brent Lowes and Bret Gaetz were busy collecting data on Canola cup yields and strip trials we had with the various varieties
on farm tests and Pioneer Hybrids new genetics (www.pioneer.com)
Only once in my past 30 years of farming did we not use our grain dryer. This year we dried about 35,000 bus of Barley which helped keep the combines moving, but that was all the action that it saw.
As the harvest ended up we saw record Wheat yields and planted three different varieties of H
RS Goodeve/A.C. Shaw and utmost all Midge tolerent Wheat with excellent yield potential. The yields ranged from 68 to 77 bus/ac.
Our Silage Oats yielded 130 bus/ac and we were happy with those yields.
The Canolas ranged from the low 40s to the high 50s with one strip trial hitting the low 60sI have never seen Canola yield like it did with this crop. I will never forget helping Ron Hetland and seeing my monitor hit in the high 70s bus/acre on a strip that was probably 70 yards and peaking at 84 bus/ac. Of course it always get you thinking, "Why was that piece of land so productive?" Fertility/micro �nutrient? Is this yield attainable on my whole farm? Why not!?
Barley yields did average in the low 80s which was very good considering the early rains and how Barley does not like wet feet. The other surprise came with our Canary seed that yielded a little over 44 bus /ac. At ,275 cents /lb., that will net out our farms greatest profit @380/ac (we only 4% of farm seeded to that crop) and we are seeding more for 2012.
We have a few tips in how you can get to these yield levels (weather cooperating of course).
The fall of 2011, will be the "fall to remember"
Thats it for now: Gina will be happy we got our goal completed.
If you have any questions on this blog or any agrology questions feel free to give our office a call and our staff will be more than pleased to offer sound Agrology advice.
Bill
Summer 2011
As the first post of mine that has hit the World Wide Web, it makes me very accountable with any thoughts I put to words in this thing they call "THE BLOG". Urged by my daughter to get more "social media saavy", we decided to add a personal touch to the Hetland Seeds website with a commentary by me, Bill Hetland.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to travel via ground and air from B.C. to Manitoba and have observed that NorthEast Saskatchewan is a pretty good place to be in agriculture as we empathize with the soggy parts of Southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Also as world financial equity markets unravel and political instability continues around the world, it makes me believe that Canadian agriculture is a good industry to be involved in, both financially and socially.
As for farming this season with Hetland Farms, we started the process in swathing some early seeded Canola (my Dad, Forrest still asks if it is the Polish kind - for all of you over 50 years of age will understand his thought process!) and as we discussed the progess of the land he farmed 40 years ago, the thought of "the more things change, the more things stay the same!"
That is all for now, my first posting, please use this as an open forum, as a platform to discuss agricultural, financial and social ideas - as my Father-in-Law used to say:
Conversations are at 3 levels, the lowest level being about 'things', the next level is discussing 'people' and the highest level evolve around 'ideas'.
- Bill Hetland
Archived Newsletters
Feb 18th, 2009
Apr 26th, 2009
Oct 30th, 2009
