The week started with a quick spring break trip to Wisconsin Dells. The kids enjoyed a few days at an indoor waterpark and indoor amusement park. I got back to work Thursday only to look at a calendar and realize that April 1 is next week, and we’re still grinding through planter repairs!

We continue to grind through planter repairs. We should have the soybean planter done in the next few days. Like the corn planter, once we got into it, there was more that needed to be done than we expected. That’s okay though, we’ll take the time we need, because planting is the most important operation that we do. Spending extra time now to make we are ready to do it right is well worth it.

The Rogator continues to take up space in the shop as I am nearing three weeks waiting for the service tech to show up with a few parts and finish the swap from dry to liquid. I’m thinking we will relocate the Rogator to the unpleasant aromas of the manure storage building if they don’t show up soon!

Audit anxieties

Dad also had to take some time out of the shop to prepare for a tax audit. He is one of the entities lucky enough to be ‘randomly selected’ by the federal government for review. He had 6 or 8-week notice and spent time organizing and double-checking previous taxes to make sure everything was in order. My brother, who deals with tax law frequently, came home for a few days to help facilitate the process. In the end, everything was okay.

We continue to be in a wet weather pattern. Every time the ground starts to dry out, it rains again. However, after a few days break from rain, it was cold enough Monday morning that there was some frost in the ground again.

The fertilizer dealer took that opportunity to get my wheat top-dressed. Again, adding wheat back into the rotation is relatively new for us. Even though we had to fight off the frost last fall, we still had some success double-cropping and plan to give it another try.

I’m still undecided as to whether wheat reduces or increases stress on our operation.

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.