What is Happening on the Farm During Summer Time?

By Scott Borcherding, Growthland Farm Manager & Associate Real Estate Broker

For most people familiar with farming and farm activities, the planting and harvest seasons are generally top of the mind when they think of “busy” seasons on the farm. While spring and fall are without a doubt the seasons with the greatest pressure to complete tasks, in modern agriculture late spring and summer are quite active periods.

What exactly are farm operators doing in the fields in late May through August? While some activities our forefathers participated in, such as rotary hoeing and row crop cultivating, today those practices are generally used much more sparingly, if at all. With today’s modern agronomy practices other field operations have replaced those passes and then some.

The development of modern self-propelled, high clearance sprayers has allowed farmers to make more passes with the option to do so later in the season, even as the crop has further matured. After planting corn or soybeans, many farm operators will make two to four passes in each field with high clearances sprayer to manage their crops and work to increase the yield potential of the crop. These passes include herbicide and insecticide applications, later nitrogen applications in corn and fungicide and micronutrient applications.

Below, a high clearance Hagie self-propelled sprayer makes an early July nitrogen application utilizing drop tubes in corn.

While farm operators complete these many passes with their self-propelled sprayers, working around wind and rain, they also need to prepare equipment for the fall harvest season and catch up on family time that is often lacking in the spring and fall. As summer does for most, it often flies by much too quickly, with operators parking the sprayer for the season only to shortly jump in the combine seat.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

If you’d like to connect with our Farm Management Team, feel free to reach out.