It has been a long busy week – post 4th of July holiday weekend.
To bring you up to date on my latest whining about our dry weather spell, today soil temperature at the 4 inch depth is 89 or 90 degrees. Available plant moisture form soil surface to the 24 inch depth is (zero) 0 percent. Can’t get much dryer than that). NWS Mesonet Station 2 miles south of my tiny farm
The 4th came off without a hitch even though we did not shoot off any fire works(To dry and fire pron) this year. Small children and big kids still all seemed to have a good time enjoying a day long BBQ with lots of burgers, hotdogs, hotlinks with all potato salad, sweet ice tea and cold watermelons you could eat. Grin … daughter and son-n-law’s horse and Jackass even got into the act, receiving more than their share of leftover melon.
I have been out looking for a feeder pig this week. I’m really disappointed at the asking prices and the poor quality pigs I have looked at so far. Live feeder pigs weighing 30 to 50 pounds are up about $0.35 to $0.70 a pound from this same time last year.
Wheat crop is in, custom cutters have move north to Kansas and Nebraska. Farms that have in the past produced up to 120 bushels an acre this year struggled to hit the cost of production(break even yield) crop yield of 16 to 20 bushels an acre. Farmers can’t stay in business long if they can’t make a living wage / profitable crop yield.
Cost of farming has gone sky high in the past few years. Many farmers will spend $800.00 to $1,000.00 a day in fuel cost alone to deep plow readying the field to plant next years crops. Add that to planting seed cost and fertilizer cost, I really don’t know how any farmer stays in business.
Driving around I am seeing many ranchers are once again culling their cattle herds, cutting them to the bare bones. Keeping only a few of their very best breeders to rebuild their herds when this long running dry spell breaks and it starts raining again.
No wheat pasture remains, Native and planted pasture grass is quickly going brown, some will be killed before we get our next rain. Sudan planted for summer grazing should be head high (6 ft tall). Most of what I have seen is only about knee high and is showing all the signs of heat and dry stress.
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Town & Country Gardening 
Keep us up-to-date. Odd bits of news here and there. In the southeast we are suppose to have a cold front come through today. A cold front in July!!! They say its happened before, but you can not verify that with me, and I’m umping-umping years old.
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Re cmmarcum Thanks for dropping by for a visit and for your comment(s)
Yes we are also having a little cool down and may even have a good chance of getting a bit of rain..
Happy gardening
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Sounds like Latoya has it right! She is so fortunate to be training under Elaine Ingham!!
As an “old farmer’s daughter” (in every sense of the phrase!) I have always been fascinated by soil. When my father returned from WWII, he eagerly entered the age of chemistry with the encouragement of local extension agents and I recall my grandparents and great-grandparents questioning the wisdom of that. Sometimes it takes us a while to listen to Nature.
I heard of Elaine Ingham through some of the sources I’m going to suggest below. It won’t surprise me if you and your readers are already familiar with them. It also won’t surprise me if there are other similar schools of thought out there. But just in case, here are some suggestions for further investigation into Sustatinability and Holistic Farm/Ranch Management:
Betsy Ross, Granger, Texas
Allan Savory –
Ian Mitchell-Innes
As with anything, there is some controversy about these folks’ approaches for farming and ranching. – and they have adjusted their own recommendations as they have learned through the years; but they are definitely worth paying attention to.
Note click-able Links removed by Blog Moderator
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What you said here is the very reason why I’am currently at Maharishi University of Management. I have been training under Dr. Elaine Ingham and she has shown myself along with my other colleagues the reasoning of why our farming industries are suffering. The farming industry is being addicts to the salts (fertilizers) all because the sales person said that it works wonders… and it does, but only for 2 weeks than everything goes back to the dust and even worst than it started. Let me ask you this question. If you were given all your nutrients through salt would you survive?? Or will your organs slowly begin to fail starting off your kidneys. So why do we feed our plants soilubilized nutrients??? We need to bring back the SOIL FOOD WEB into the soil. The soil food web is how mother nature always done it all these years and every living creature and plant agreed on it. So why must we astray? We WILL be evicted from this planet if everyone including the farmers do not start to realize the importance of the micro just as the macro. SOIL FOOD WEB you guys! It exist and is the reason of our suffering we are lacking our bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozas, micro/macro arthopods. Its time to wake up 🙂 The answers are here! Follow my post and ask me questions! I’am planning on after finishing my education here to go around America and than the world spreading the gospel of the Soil Food Web.
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Re latoyacrick – Thanks for taking time to visit my tiny blog and for your comment(s).
Good luck in your studies.
Happy Gardening
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. . . and I thought you were going to “talk” about Sirius and Canis Major. . . !
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Re Tami Baker – Big grin – I gave you fair warning “Mid Summer – Dog Day’s – Not What You Think”
Happy summer gardening
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Heck! I wonder too how farmers keep going….
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Farming and fishing – same woes!
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😦
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