2014

NEIA Farms (Lantzky Farms)

Producing quality grain and livestock to the world in a safe and environmentally responsible manner from northeast Iowa.

July 23rd: I have to apologize for not updating this blog for the past couple of months.  I must admit that the last couple of months have been extremely busy. We finished planting on May 30th and finished sidedressing by the middle of June.  Then the rains of June came and 10 inches of rain in June is not helpful.

We are now adding the deck to our house, prepping equipment for harvest and preparing to sell hogs out of our Chickasaw site.

The grain markets have absolutely fallen apart with the corn market falling over $1.00 per bushel since the first of June.

I will be trying to update the blog with what was happening here shortly now that things have slowed down.
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May 15th:  (Corn Planting Progress: Lantzky Farms 46%, State of Iowa 70%)This spring is starting to sound much like last spring in that we have only had six good days to complete any real field work.  We hired a custom operator to drill some soybeans for us starting May 5th.  This was some lighter soil and had the cornstalks removed last fall for bedding.  We started planting corn the next day and by May 11th had just short of 700 acres of corn and 240 acres of beans planted.

This last Sunday night, we received over 3.5" of rain in just over 6 hours.  We had water running everywhere and this forced us out of the field again.  Today is the 5th day in a row of overcast clouds and a few scattered sprinkles.
The grain market has reacted negatively to the May supply and demand report that saw a nation wide average corn yield of 165 bushel per acre and a carryover that increased from this year.  This has caused corn prices to drop close to $.30 in the past week.

We did fill up the Basset site this past week with 2400 head of 21 day old little pigs.  They appear to be in good shape.

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April 14th:  This last weekend was a real wake up call.  Saturday started off warm and muggy with 75 degrees.  We celebrated Easter a week early at Rogers with the annual Easter Egg hunt.  After a wonderful afternoon, arrived back to Waverly just in time for a nice hail storm.  The rest of the evening was a nice light show of lightning.  Sunday started to see a drop in temps and drizzle.  Natalie had her first soccer game and it wasn't to bad the first half.  At halftime, it really started to rain and ended up raining all afternoon.   We had just over 2.5" before the rain turned to snow late in the evening.  This morning when we woke up, there was close to 1" of snow on the ground and temps had fallen to the upper 20's.

Prior to the weekend, we started to map out some of the fields in Bremer county.  We needed to map these as 40 acres will be sowed down to oatlage for the landlords cattle operation.  We also mapped out 20 acres of sorghum and an AB curve line on another field in order to get the endrows to work along the creek.  

The fields also dried up enough for us to reach the backhoe that sat out all winter.  We blew a hose last fall as we were cleaning a fenceline and were not able to get back to it until after harvest.  After harvest the snow set in and we were not able to reach it until this spring.  We replaced all eleven hoses that were in the back of the backhoe.  Amazingly we were able to remove them and get them replaced with out installing them incorrectly.

The grain market continues to see some strength.  The situation in the Ukraine and a USDA report that showed the carryout of corn dropping from 1.6 billion bushels down to 1.35 billion bushels.
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March 24th: I really wish there was something to write an update on besides the cold weather. We are still waiting for the snow to melt off the fields and from the fencelines in order to do some clearing of brush from some of the worst areas. Bassett is seeing a delay in the marketing of fat hogs. This is due to the sow farm that supplies us with pigs breaking with PED. This disease is currently ravaging the hog industry. This is a very serious flu that the sows and little pigs catch. The result is near 100% mortality. We will be receiving some the first part of April to restock. I have spoke with other growers and they are telling me that they will be setting empty for close to 6 weeks this summer. We have officially closed the books on basketball season and are now looking forward to soccer if the snow will ever melt. Along with the outlook for soccer, we are also looking forward to getting a front sidewalk poured and the deck put on the back of our house. 

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January 21st: This cold weather is really starting to get old. Roger and I slipped down to Peoria, Il yesterday to attend a Precision Planting seminar. We left at 4 in the afternoon and what should have been a 4 hour drive turned into a 7 hour adventure. It was snowing when we left and the system followed us all the way to Peoria. The last 40 miles of driving on the interstate were possible due to the fact that we had a semi ahead of us that we could see the tail lights, otherwise it was a pure whiteout condition. There were over 1100 producers from 23 states and 3 countries that attended. Precision Planting makes attachments for the planter that increase the accuracy of seed placement which in turn increases yield. What we learned was that this company has found a way to increase planting speeds from the traditional 5 MPH to 10 MPH with no reduction in quality of stand. This is accomplished thru some amazing technology that allows the seed to be placed accurately every time. Although it is an interesting concept, I doubt that we would be able to achieve 10 MPH on all of our fields. The main reason: “ROCKS”. On some of these fields we may start with 16 rows but would be down to 13 rows by the time we made one pass at 10 MPH. This was just a kickoff for this product and will not be available in mass until 2015. If you see us flying across our fields, it may not be just to beat a rain, but probably because we updated our planter. We have started to load market hogs our of our Chickasaw Farms site. They have grown well on the new corn and are going to be right on target in the 270 to 290 pound range. The rest of the time is currently being spent analyzing cashflows, reviewing crop insurance options, preparing taxes and other winter chores that need to be completed before spring. There is still fencelines that need to be cleared, but with drifts 2 feet deep near the trees and daytime highs close to 0, let alone the 20 below zero windchills, needless to say, this chore can wait for another day. Type your paragraph here.