Maybe you have some grass on end rows coming back where you finished up and left something out of the mix. Perhaps corn on a knoll is slightly shorter where it was compacted. Maybe you've had a problem controlling pesky weeds in soybeans because you tried to go without a residual one more time. Maybe you went with a residual and saw some crop injury from not cleaning spray tanks properly.
All these issues are worth considering, but they're nothing compared to one year ago this week.
One year ago a fire raged, with no rain and five or more days of 100 degrees plus, followed by a record or near record number of days of 90 degrees or higher by August 5.
Except for a few pocket areas that have received too much rain or a few areas with too little rain, in the grand scheme of market planning Indiana and Ohio are the garden spots of the Midwest!
You can keep up on further developments in three different ways. First, check out Friday Field Walk on this website every other Friday. It features reports from six farmers and observers in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Second, look for Crop Watch '13 every Monday. You'll find the latest on what we're seeing on a field we're watching all season long. Or just look for daily updates on crop topics in local news. And you can also check out the magazine monthly for more in-depth coverage of big crop issues.
Take a look at these pictures, starting with the ones that remind you how thankful you should be if you have a crop this year.