Irrigation Shenanigans | Corn Harvest 2024 | Haying and Calving

Well, there's a new guy. I haven't seen him yet. Who's your mama? Meet the Peterson family. Our dad, the three Peterson brothers, and our families farm together in central Kansas. Our family farm started in 1882 and has been raising cattle and crops ever since. Please subscribe to this channel and give us a like and a comment if you enjoy the video. This heifer pair caused me some fits. They were out on these weeds and did not want to be caught. The calf was really good at hiding. I'm finally getting it kicked out with the others. So this might be absolutely crazy, but we're gonna try to pump that little puddle of water out on these beans because they got some rains and they actually have a chance to finish now, so we'll see how much... How many problems we can run into. We just pumped about an inch and a half on that corn and it made a really big difference. We ended up chopping it all anyways, but it was 40 bushel an acre difference. So if we could add 10 bushel to these beans, we're gonna try. This thing hasn't run for two years. Alright, usually we back this contraption in in July, but it's been two years or we didn't use it all of 23. I think we only used it for a very short time in 22. This is how much water we've got and we got a quarter section of beans to put it on between wanting to get the water used up, help the beans, making sure this thing is still running without having to wait too long. We're gonna try to use it. You do what you gotta do. We're farming! Right here is where we filmed tractor stuck. So the pond had been pumped all the way down all the way dry in 2018 and we filmed tractor stuck right in the bottom of this pond. Got it primed up. It's flushing out. What choice do I have? Any choice. I think. Every now and then it'll take like an hour and a half. Alright, well she's running. I do have a leak in our underground line up to here. So that's unfortunate. I think I'm just gonna let it run. We don't have that much water to pump and we'll get that fixed after we harvest the beans. It's a beautiful labor day. We had a nice get-together at noon, but definitely did some labor today. Need to get home. Here's the happy cows. Those are the ones that have had their calves and the ones waiting to have their calves are in the pen where we can watch them closer. I'm trying to get these three two-day-old calves, pears, out on the nice green I got grown for them, but they don't want to leave the pen. Got diesel in there. Came out here with the four-wheel and all the cows, they quit grazing and started looking for their calves. Beautiful night. Labor day. Because it ran all night. All right, it's Tuesday morning, day after labor day. We didn't work too much yesterday. And now it feels like we got a bunch of things to do. I'm about to go rake with the Kubota rake here. Some of that Sedan grass we swathed. Nathan and Kendall are getting the Sioux Steel bin set up to put all this corn in that we we fill it a couple trucks here and we should get get into full swing corn harvest today. And then I know Nathan has some spraying to do. We've got some cattle stuff to do. Obviously some haying stuff. Busy slate for this week. It was 57 degrees in the night. So I woke up to a nice cool crisp morning, which means fall is almost here, which is a good feeling. We've got most of the corn we know is dry cut. But we're gonna keep going. But before that, needed to get over some of this wheat stubble again. Everything really grows when it goes to raining, so these pigweeds are growing crazy fast. And then the volunteer, lots of volunteers sprouted. Getting it cleaned back up. We'll be drilling wheat in a little more than a month, maybe a month. Okay, one of these new cows finally had a black calf. We've had Red and Charlay so far. Charlay's finally had a black calf. You would think cows would like to walk out the gate on the big cream grass out there, but I can't believe how much trouble they cause. Even when it's wide open. There's four pair to kick out today. They're causing me fits. Come on, cow. Now follow calf before she comes back. Hey, all right, busy fall. I am going to cut some corn with Greg. We're not going very hard yet, but starting on the dry stuff. Kendall is gonna get the M7 hooked onto the baler and bale up some sandgrass. Well, we cut some before the alfalfa, so it's been down a few days longer. It's ready to be baled. The rest will probably not go, maybe even until next, maybe Monday. But we're getting some drying weather for it. We'd actually be nice to get another rain for the beans. So I just met those cows distillers up on the hill. So that's where they are now, but you can see where they walk to get to water. Follow this path right down the hill, through here, and then out onto the Sedan, out onto the Sedana Mill next to the grazing. This is their path back to water. You can tell they're spending a lot of time out there, and they still have access to this little six acre paddock of grass plus the Sedan. They all look pretty full. They look pretty good. I think the next place I'm gonna move them, rather than moving them around this pasture, is probably closer to the home place. And we will probably wean them late September. One thing I like to do before weaning is feed them at the bunk for you know, maybe ten days, two weeks. And those calves, they follow their moms right up to the bunk, eat out of the bunk. Then when it's time to wean them, they already know how to eat out of the bunk, and that's not something they have to learn while going through the stress of weaning. I know I have at least like a two-week window before I'm gonna wean them. But I think I still have one to two weeks before I'm out of that Sedan, before they're done grazing that. So you can see how they eat a lot of this, and then they trample some into the ground. They're on 13 acres, so it's about three pair per acre. That's gonna make really good cover going into the winter. After they eat some off, trample it down, and then it'll get a chance to grow back a little bit, I think, before a freeze. But it still acts as a cover crop because there was so much wheat residue. Which also, all the root, this plant right here, will have a root going pretty deep into the ground. And that's what's gonna help next year's crop, and help the soil. You can see they've really been liking this big shade tree. They got that whole area all. But it's in the pasture side. They have access to both sides of that hot wire right now. All right, we're bending corn this morning. Got one of our end dumps dumping there. Getting the grain cart ready to go. Kind of hard to see. Kind of hard to see in the bin, but filling up the Sioux Steel grain bin. Cattle are fed. There's the Sioux Silage piles over there. Harvesting my field by my sunflowers here. Got some passengers riding with me. Brighton, can you say hi to the camera? Steel, can you say hi? He's like, no dad, I'm busy. I'm busy driving the combine. Picking corn amongst, well, next to the sunflowers. They're moving along. And it's time to unhook the swather, hook on to the baler, and get some of that first sedan that I put down baled up. Okay, cranking the baler jack up. All right, we've got 15 bales on like seven acres here. Pretty good start to millet, sorghum sedan season. Sometimes this shed is full of semis, but they're all out of corn feed. I guess I'll steal a spot with a tractor. Can I have a red snow corn piece? Okay. Yummy. A what? It's hot. It's hot? It's hot. You had to warm it up? Oh, in the microwave? Can I have a scone? Yeah. Or a coffee? Ooh, a cinnamon roll, please? Okay. Two more overnight. There's the calf. Walking to her to get to the same time as the mom. See what she does when I get there. That's a big calf. All right, Tord. I already tagged you, calf. I already tagged you, calf. All right, we're out here spraying the double crop milo for headworms. You can see this milo looks it looks better than our full season does. Of course, it's on a bottom ground field. Also, it is a little drought stressed again. So we've kind of used up those really good rains we had. It'll make milo, but if we have the late season stress and don't get a rain soon, then we're at a little risk of it falling down. So milo has the tendency to kind of cannibalize its stock if it gets really stressed. But hopefully this will hang on and maybe, you know, hopefully we'll get another rain for it. There's little chances tonight, but it does appear there's some chinch bug pressure that I just saw, which is unfortunate. Seems like the chinch bugs kind of make the leaves will start turning yellow. I guess I should get out and actually look. The headworms are similar to what can get in corn or soybeans, and they eat the grain. Sometimes the double crop milo is worse than the full season. So we actually didn't spray our full season milo partly because it didn't have as much yield potential and at the point where we had to decide we didn't have we had gotten some rain, but we didn't have any more in the forecast. It did it did rain a couple more a couple more showers, so I wondered if I should have done it. But the pressures weren't real high. The pressure was higher in this field. We haven't sprayed for headworms in a couple years partly because of the poor yield potential. So you have to be able to save enough bushels to pay for it. Sometimes we're busy when we need to do it, but I'm getting this one done. I flushed out a deer and her two babies. I don't know if you can catch them there. There they go. Well after one round of the pivot, we pumped out what little water was in the pond. Figured we might as well, but now we're gonna pull pull the pump out of the pond and put it away for the winter after one one pumping. So this pump has hydraulics on it that allow us to raise and lower it. We put it in one position to pump out of the pond and then another position to transport. Then we've got a cable tied up here to keep it in the spot we want it. And we have a T-post that we stuck in the ground. Pulling her out. She didn't stay in there very long, but pumped the majority of the water out there. We pulled all these pipes. We're going up to the riser and disconnect the diesel intake. So one handy thing with this cab stand system is if I'm spraying something in crop that I don't necessarily need 100% coverage, I'll just turn on the end rows. And it compensates for turning. I'll show you. It'll go full on the outside and then put less on on the inside. There's a bump. So it gets a little mad at me because I'm turning so sharp and it hits its limits. But it makes it kind of handy. Then I don't have to do a bunch of out rounds and trial them down more crop. But anytime you're you're spraying out rounds going around corners, it adjusts and you know puts more on on the outside and and pulses the inside a lot less so you're getting equal coverage. And also I set up my well the planter planted at a zero degrees so straight north and south so I can set set this. And for the most part it does pretty good steering in between the rows for me. Here's a muddy spot. I don't think it's still muddy, but it was muddy when we planted. There went the buck! Man he jumped out right in front of me. Also, I hope I don't hit his antlers next spring because he had a big old rack and it was really odd shaped. He had one like one point just poking off like in the weird direction. This calf was just born. It's up nursing. It stood up really fast. A red red baldy, I guess. I was gonna tag it, but um don't really want to keep it from nursing. Maybe I'll make Nathan tag it tomorrow. Greg and I are going to Ohio tomorrow. So Nathan's gonna have to be in charge of calving uh and feeding my load. Wow, look at these guys. Got the pump pulled while I was spraying. This old irrigation engine just had a real long season this year. A whole three days, well 36 hours basically. No, I just set it in there and doesn't take up as much room. Uh-oh. It's gone. That ain't good. That's what happens when the river comes up. So surprisingly it rained enough. I knew the river would come up, but boy I didn't think our river screen would get in trouble. Got over on top of this tree. We're kind of getting it loose. We're gonna see how well our crane does its job. Try not to break anything. You might have to pick up on it so it doesn't scrape the bottom. I can Hey, maybe I should You think I should pull my pickup forward a little? Now we're fishing. Greg had to get wet. Thanks, Greg. We took the suction pipe off. Hope that hose doesn't fall off. Now it's gonna go too far. Uh, okay, pause. All the way here to look at soybeans, cinnamon combines, and sunflowers, which they walked through a few of earlier. Eat it, eat it. Woo! No, it's just pretend. Reach in and see if you can feel the calf. Reach in with your hand. Can you milk it? Oh, good job. What does a cow say, Owen? Moo. Good job, Owen. Watch this. Say ride a little crane. Choo choo! Thanks for watching, everyone. Check out our music videos linked in the description. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, and explore our website www.petersonfarmbrothers.com See you guys next time.