I had to enlist our next generation, son Emry, last week to help finish up the last roll of tile we had. The weather pattern is said to be turning wetter and colder. And we’ve all had our turn of being “under the weather” a bit. Though we haven’t worked terribly hard the last few weeks, we’re just ready to be done for a little bit.

We called it a wrap on drainage work for the fall.

Improve more than 12 fields

I lost count along the way, but my best estimate is that drainage issues were addressed in 26 different ‘spots’ in more than a dozen fields. This could have been anything from repairing broken tile, replacing an outlet, replacing broken tile, or installing new tile. Most of the tile runs were just a few hundred feet long, I can only remember four runs that were longer than 1,000 feet. Like I said a few weeks ago, a lot of small, time-consuming jobs. (Jobs you would have a hard time getting a contractor to do.)

Of course, we went over our budget, but when it’s fit, you do the work. We ended up using almost seven rolls of tile! Except for repairs, we used only 4” tile this fall, so that’s about 21,000 feet of tile!

Harvest the benefits in 2025

Cleaning up all these issues should make operations go more smoothly in the future.

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With those benefits, I figure we added 6 acres of production. If each area we addressed was only a quarter acre (some were less, and some were more), we come up to roughly 6 acres. Assuming the value of our labor is equal to the value of tile we installed, we’re into those 6 acres for about $3,700 an acre. We sure can’t buy farmland for that price!

I hope everyone is finishing up you’re not already done! Stay safe and healthy!