I heard it rain overnight. It was finally a day I could sleep in a little, and at 6 a.m., ‘Bonker’ decided it was time for me to wake up.

Bonker, as the kids have named it, is the bird that goes around to several house windows repeatedly flying in to them EVERY morning. (Rest assured we don’t have time to keep the windows sparkling clean!) You would think Bonker would learn, right? But this has been going on for months now. We don’t know why he does this. He’s not a pet. We don’t feed him!

So, a lot has been going on since I last updated everyone two weeks ago. The corn has been growing like crazy, the soybeans finally appear to be growing, and wheat harvest will begin soon.

Last week was crazy busy. Irrigation start-up was all consuming. It wasn’t anything out of the normal, just mickey-mouse stuff everywhere. Finally Sunday evening we caught a little shower, then again early Monday morning. In all, that was a little over an inch. Now we’re able to put focus back on field work.

We are actually in a good place right now, pretty much caught up. Somehow, I squeezed in enough loads last week to complete herbicide applications to corn. This week, I was able to make it across all the soybean fields with herbicides and plant food. Next up will be plant food and fungicide on the corn in a week or ten days.

Related:Using aerial imagery to determine nitrogen application in Virginia wheat

Switching to liquid N

In January, nitrogen prices drove us to make the decision to use liquid fertilizer this year. We knew at the time it would make our lives hectic, but it was the best choice, as we were still in a depressed corn market. We are fans of split applying nitrogen, so that meant Y-drops were in our future. We continue down that road and plan to get the Y-drops running next week.

However, some lower priced dry product (that was booked but not used by other customers) came available this week. We snatched it up and dad made selective applications to fields based on priority of need. I would guess he covered 30-40% of the corn acres this week.

With the rain we will finish installing the Y-drops on the sprayer and be ready to sidedress when it dries out again. The project has been more involved than we had envisioned. Time crunch and vague instructions have added to the stress of the job.