Where have I been...?

So I realize that I've been terribly absent from blogging. Not to mention that I've totally skipped sharing about the highlight of the farming year - harvest.

I have my reasons.

Summer is always busy. This year's had several special items:

• Rose started school so we were spending a lot of time preparing (half day schedules work great for the kids but are a little complicated for working and childcare schedules) and "welcoming" events with her. I was just as giddy as she was - I loved school!
• We enjoyed a couple annual family vacations to northern Wisconsin (Clover Leaf Lakes with my side of the family and the Willow Flowage with Ben's side).
• We hosted Molly's first birthday party at our house in late August (i.e. cleaning and cooking). 
• Ben and I had a couple weekend get-a-ways. First to my cousin's wedding in the Twin Cities and second was a late anniversary trip to Madison to re-trace the steps of our early dating and take in a Badger football game and Tim Hawkins comedy show.
• Sad item of the summer was that my best friend moved back to her hometown. So happy for her and her family, but such a difficult adjustment to not be just a quick drive away anymore.

So excited for school!

Molly <3's dirt cake!

By Monona Bay - site of our first
date and later Ben proposed. 

Then the gray cloud of the past few months and a BIG reason I've been "silent" is that I basically had postpartum depression. "Aren't you a year late" you might ask? It was triggered by weaning Molly from nursing (I made it to a year!). My hormones went cRaZy! It was a really wild ride for about two months or so. I am really grateful for a few things through it - I recognized what it was pretty early on so I could cope with it better, re-affirmed that I have some amazing people in my life, gave me a very "real" experience of leaning on God and finding joy in Him despite my circumstances, and it gave me such a perspective on what others with various forms of depression are dealing with so I can love and encourage them so much better now than I could have before.

Fall - love/hate season. It's so beautiful and so fun to harvest the crops and see the results of the full year of planning and preparation. It's also the same time as Ben's other favorite past-time - bow hunting. So harvest + bow hunting = Nicole is a single parent. I wouldn't trade it for anything though. I fully knew this was who Ben was before I married him - it's who he is. He wouldn't be my husband if he didn't hunt and farm. 

Lastly, I recently transitioned jobs. I'm sad to leave the Wisconsin FFA Foundation. It was six years of blood, sweat and tears mixed with such success, reward and personal growth. I'll never be very far from FFA though - I'll certainly be back at the convention and keep in touch with various people. Three weeks into my new job and I am really enjoying it! I'm my own business entity contracting with Beck Ag for projects as a market contact specialist. It gives me a sense of entrepreneurship that I love, along with working with a well-established, top-notch, values-driven company.  

Through the past few months and all the above happenings, I almost gave up on blogging. Actually, I did make the decision to give it up. I was frustrated at my inconsistency. Also, I have a tons of ideas for the blog, but I have a lot of responsibilities that take priority over it so it's hard for me to settle for it being less than my best (sorry, little perfectionist tendency). It was Ben's encouragement that something is better than nothing. If he's my only fan, then I'm okay with that because he's my most important. 

Acceptance Speech - Vance Agribusiness 40 Under 40 Awards

You know when you watch award shows (Oscars, Emmy’s, Golden Globes, etc.) and there are so many different types of acceptance speeches – the “totally shocked, don’t know what to say,” the “I prepared a little something just-in-case,” the “I am going to list everyone even though the music is trying to kick me off,” and lately a lot of the “I’m going to share a message with this 10 seconds.”

I get it now.

I was named on the list of Vance Agribusiness 40 under 40 honorees last week. It’s kind of a big deal. And that fact makes me squirm.

I’m a humble Midwesterner. I want to respond with, “Aw shucks…thanks…” and then change the subject.

When the list was published, people started sharing their kind words via Facebook, email and in-person. I knew I needed more of a response.

The truth is, I don’t take time to reflect on my accomplishments, and I should. Not for me to boast, but to revel in God’s goodness through all of it.

Thinking back on it this past week refreshed my gratitude to how God has orchestrated my life thus far. Starting with how He created me – strengths, talents and wisdom along with my weaknesses and failings. The people He has put in my life –my loving husband, my daughters, my parents, siblings, friends, etc. The experiences I have had along the way to shape my life perspective.

All of these are crucial background that played into the reason I received the award, which was to recognize the impact I’ve made through my work with the Wisconsin FFA Foundation. I am very thankful to have made a difference on an organization that gives youth opportunities to discover, prepare for and work toward their future career and lifetime goals. It’s an organization that empowers young men and women to embrace their individual abilities and be purposeful in how they live life. I am proud to have played a role in growing the capacity of this organization to change even more lives. Along with a great team of board members, staff and supporters, we were able to double annual fundraising over five years, largely by restructuring the partnership options to be more inviting for supporters.

So I guess my acceptance speech might have been e) all of the above. J

What you won't hear about the connection between acid rain and farming.

As soon as you think you have things "figured out" with growing a certain crop, a new thing pops up. This year, it was striped leaves.

Looks cool, doesn't it? Looks are deceiving, let me tell you.

Before you start getting all goofy on me, this is NOT a GMO/franken-food thing. Remember what assuming does? Makes an a** out of 'u' and 'me' (assume=ass-u-me).

Anyway, these stripes are a sign of a nutrient deficiency, similar to how nail chipping can be a sign of nutrient deficiency in people. We know the culprit is sulfur, which we've discovered through research (i.e. conferring with agronomists and googling credible resources) and tissue/soil sampling (we go out in the field to collect soil and a bunch of leaves and put them in separate bags and taken them to a nearby lab).

The cool thing about it is why sulfur is becoming a deficiency in the soil now.

Wait, are you getting goofy on me again, assuming it's because of our terrible farming practices? Don't assume...

It's actually because our country is doing better at not polluting the air as much. Remember "acid rain" that we all learned about and how terrible it is? The acid rain was caused by too much sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere, and is bad for lots of things. However, it was actually good for the soil and plants, within reason. Did you know that the goals of the regulations to clean up acid rain were met in 2007, which was three years ahead of schedule? I didn't, although I was out of the country for half of that year...

Back to our striped corn. Now that emissions have been "cleaned up," the soil isn't "naturally" getting sulfur anymore. So now we apply it in a regulated manner. Contrary to what some might think about farmers "dousing" their fields with different things, we're quite frugal by nature (as I think most farmers are). We only want to apply what will be used by the plant and therefore turn into cost benefit. We don't like waste.

Good thing for us is that we had a couple isolated areas with this deficiency last year. So we planned to include sulfur in the fertilizer program this year. The reason we had some striping is that the plant's roots hadn't reached granule yet. About a week after the above photo was taken, the leaves turned a nice dark green.

So cheers to the air being cleaner!

The good, the bad and the ugly of #plant14 for this farm widow.

How did planting go? A frequent question this time of year. From the farm perspective, it went surprisingly well. We got a late start because of the cold winter and spring. Once the soil was warm enough, they had some really solid stretches of time without rain to get everything in the ground.

Ben did some quick math and estimates that he alone planted 11 million seeds (not counting the fields his dad planted). It's a miracle to look out across a newly spouted field each spring and see all the little rows of life popping up, considering the precision required - specific spacing of the seeds, specific depth where the planter needs to adjust to different soil types like sand versus clay, continuing weather concerns like late freeze or pounding rain causes the soil to form a crust over the seeds.

That's the farm perspective. The farmer's wife perspective was different this spring.

Looking back, I was pretty depressed for much of this "spring widow" season. It's a common phrase among farmers that the wives are like widows in the spring and fall because they don't have their spouse around at all. It's a tongue-in-cheek term that doesn't intend to take away from the heartache of those who truly are widows. However, the term does have its own set of understanding and emotion that is real and valid for those who live it twice a year.

This was my 10th spring/fall "widow season," so it really blind-sighted me that it was the most difficult one to-date.

I thought I was used to it by now. Especially since I grew up on a farm, so understanding the craziness of fieldwork is sort of second nature. I enjoy being involved in all the craziness.

Being the spring widow is different though. This is a whole new experience to be the wife and mother of a crop farmer. And few people get it. I'm not trying to blame anyone or throw myself a pity party, it's just another part of the reality. At my core, I have profound respect my husband, our farm and our responsibility. At the surface, it sucks sometimes.

• It means my husband, who is my best friend and my rock, is gone for weeks at a time. He's gone, but yet so close. He's always within a couple miles of our house, but sometimes we go days without being able to talk to one another. Not even a text, because he has so much to do and focus on. There are certain types of fieldwork when he can talk and text, but he's taking on more of the "involved" fieldwork roles where there's a lot more going on and takes more concentration. 
• It means I am a single mother to our children for weeks at a time, which is really trying on my already-worn-out patience. The older Rose gets, the more I realize that it's also really hard on her too that she doesn't see her daddy, which can cause her to be really irritable. So whenever I hear people to talk about the danger of children to be in the tractor, I joke that it's probably more dangerous for them to be with their crabby mother! :) (Joking aside, farm safety is extremely important to us with our children.)
• It means I am the main caretaker of our farmhouse and five acres for weeks at a time, which is really daunting and tiring. So to our neighbors and anyone else who drives by or visits our house, please accept my apologies that it's far from a picturesque, perfectly kept-up farm house. If it bothers you, don't visit for 5-10 more years when I can get the kids to help out with the work more. There's only so much lawn care that a four-year-old and 9-month-old can do! 

 This spring had a few more added challenges:

1. This brutal winter meant everyone was celebrating the nice weather that much more. I admit that I was jealous of seeing and hearing about all their family time and was really frustrated that we didn't get to do those things as a family. 
2. The way the weather worked out this year, Ben ended up having to work every day for about four weeks straight. There's usually a couple weekends when he has a day off, which breaks everything up more. Just didn't work out like that this year. It put a damper on Mother's Day and Memorial Day weekend. 
3. We had some other transition going on at the same time, which meant for an extra difficult time for Rose. Her emotions were x10 for everything, which was really tough on me, especially without Ben as back-up. 

I'm still a spring widow for a couple more weeks, but things are on the upswing. Just coming to grips with everything helps a lot. And we've been really fortunate to take advantage of a couple impromptu date night opportunities.

Grateful for all the things that aligned for last night's much-needed impromptu date at Olive Garden. I was finished with working/attending the Wisconsin FFA Convention, the girls are still by my parents because the convention, and the fields were still too wet from Wednesday's rain. We even used a giftcard from Badgerland Financial that they gave us as appreciation for our land loan with them. 

I also found solace in these couple accounts of life as a farmwife: Farm Women: Dealing with the "Other Woman." and one more that I can't find now. If you have it, I'd be so grateful if you could share the link in the comments. I would appreciate being able to go back to it next time the going gets tough.

I just saw this song this morning. I dedicate it to God, my husband, and my best friend Jen, all of whom get me through it all. I am so grateful for their love.

We put a fish by every seed!

Disclaimer - A lot of the detailed agronomy that I refer to in this post is way over my head. Ben is really the expert, and I try my best not to mess up the information. Please show grace if I made any mistakes, but do kindly point them out so I can be sure to correct it.

As a crop farmer, people always ask Ben what he does during the winter. He is always surprised that their tone implies they don't think he does much of anything. I'll be honest, crop farming makes for a much more relaxed winter than livestock/dairy farming. Really though, he goes from a double-time (or more) work schedule to a single-time work schedule. It's not like he sits around doing nothing for several months of the year.

The huge project this winter has been re-working their entire crop nutrient system. It's a pretty big overhaul from what they've always done. You know how people always tell young children that plants just need sun, soil and water to grow? Wrong. If only it were that simple. One really important thing is that plants need macro-nutrients and micro-nutrient, similar to us. Our protein, carbohydrates and fats (macro-nutrients) are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to plants. It's also called N-P-K. Who knows why...? Any hands up...? Correct, because those are their symbols on the periodic table of elements. Micro-nutrients for us would be all the various vitamins - basically just read the bottle of your preferred multi-vitamin and you can see all of them there. Plants also have a big list of micro-nutrients. (Little aside here - some agronomists think that micro-nutrients will be the next big breakthrough in taking crop yields to the next level.)

So crop nutrients are a VERY good thing. There are a lot of natural ways we can get these important nutrients into the soil. A big way is to allow as much of the crop "waste" to stay back on the field after harvest. The stem/stalk of the plant contains a lot of the nutrients, so they go back into the soil when it decomposes. (Note - this isn't always possible because some farms need to use it for bedding, etc.) Crop rotation helps this even more because certain crops can "fix" nitrogen from the air, so they are naturally creating the nutrient that is later added to the soil through decomposition. Reducing soil erosion is also important to preventing phosphorus to run off since it binds itself with soil.

Even with all this, it still really helps to give the crops a carefully measured amount of these nutrients at the best times. If you really pay attention during the summer, you can notice some fields of corn look yellow-ish if they are lacking nitrogen and then a week or so after the farmer applies some it turns a darker green.

This is the part that Ben and his dad re-worked all winter. About two years ago they started to sense they would benefit from changing their nutrient management process. So they actively researched methods for applying these nutrients - wet, dry, in fall after harvest, at planting time, right after planting. They based their decision on what seemed like it would be the best for the plant. Then they identified all the equipment they would need to get/change to accommodate the new process. Rather than spend a huge amount of money buying the equipment that is meant for this process, they decided to use what they currently have and modify it. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that it was a very big undertaking to design and fabricate everything.

After months worth of working on it, last week was the day of reckoning with the new equipment. The weather and soil temperature was all right for getting seeds in the ground. All those hours, days, weeks and months of creating it, and then at the step of testing it there's a urgency that it needs to work. And it did! Just a day of calibrating and some very minor adjustments, and they were "full speed ahead" (which is like 4.5 mph for planting corn!).

Now we wait half a year to see what the final result will be. Lots of patience and prayer!

http://www.manyhoops.com/children-s-recipes.html

As Ben was doing all this, he said that the Native Americans used to put dead fish next to each corn plant. He looked up how much N-P-K is in a dead fish (apparently there are websites where you can look up the elements in a whole bunch of things). He found out that it's almost identical to what they had planned to apply. Pretty cool! They constructed two wagons to transport the fertilizer, and they thought about painting on the side of them, "We put a fish by every seed!"

Five reasons why you should plant a garden THIS year.

It’s not too late! I highly recommend that everyone plant a garden. Anyone who knows me will probably laugh at that, because I am probably the last person they’d call a gardener.

That’s right, no green thumb on this girl. I could blame it on any number of things (too busy, too hard with a baby, we never did it while I was growing up, etc.). Truth is, I’m really just not that into it. I do have a couple past experiences that have left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but they are funny to recount. 

Story #1 - First was when I took the initiative to plant my own garden during junior high. Except, planting it was about all I did. The weeds took over and I don’t think I ever ate a single thing from it. I still feel guilty over all the wasted potential of those poor little seeds.

Story #2 - The second memorable experience was the COMPLETE opposite. It was our first full summer in our house. Ben LOVES to plant and grow things. He also likes to do nearly every project to an extreme measure. I should have known I needed to reign in this new “project.” He prepared the area with humungous tractor and a moldboard plow, which means it was a huge area. And we filled up the whole thing. We were in way over our heads. Then it came time to harvest, and we were swimming in produce. The biggest irony is that Ben doesn’t eat ANY vegetables, so he just kept saying we should put a “free pick-your-own produce” sign out by the road. That’s when I made him promise that we would only maintain our fruit from then on (apple, peach, pear trees, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, etc.). 

LOTS of salsa from Story #2.

Did you know there's a "Sneak some zucchini onto your neighbor's porch day?" Plant some and you'll find out why!

I am learning to like it though. I've hesitantly agreed to do a garden again this year. And for all these reasons, I encourage you to plant a garden of some kind.

1. Therapeutic – Hobbies are so enjoyable and really enrich one’s life. Gardening is a great hobby that also provides delicious and nutritious benefits. If you live in Wisconsin like me, you’ve just been stuck up in the house for a nasty winter. What better way to replenish your Vitamin D.
   
   
2. Social/Family Activity – We are always looking for things that are fun for Rose (4 years) but do-able with Molly (8 months). I think it's going to be a fun activity for us this summer. When it comes time to harvest the produce, any canning or other preservation is much more fun to do with friends. 
   
   
3. Appreciation/Understanding – Nurturing plants is a great way to gain appreciation and understanding for the world we live in. Selfishly, I also think it creates a better sense of appreciation of full-scale farms, because they are gardening but on a much, much larger scale. When you see how the drought weeks of July stress out your lettuce, how ridiculously persistent the weeds are, or how devastating an untreated potato bug infestation can be on all your hard work, you’ll get a glimpse of what is happening across every single farm field.
   
   
4. Tasty – There’s something to be said about learning when the ideal time is to pick produce and eat it that very same day. Nothing compares.
   
   
5. No harm done – Don’t let gardening failure get you down, like it did to me. Just learn from it so you can do better next time. I learned that smaller is better, so we prioritize what would be a good to plant versus something we don’t really care to eat. Yes, it does feel sad to let the plants get choked out by weeds or let the produce be wasted because you can’t even get it to a food pantry in time, but it’s even beneficial as compost. So there’s really no harm.  

No excuses. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time if you want to do a really small little plot or even an herb garden. The seeds come with planting instructions on the back. Just give it a shot and see what happens.

So why do we buy land?

This was written as a guest post for the Vita Plus Thank Farmers! blog.


It isn’t often that land on the other side of our fence line goes up for sale. So, after a few months of phone calls and paperwork, we were excited to complete the final step of transferring the title.
After the four of us – my father-in-law, mother-in-law, husband and myself – finished our celebratory lunch at the Pizza Hut buffet, we drove out to look at the field. We parked the car for a minute while my father-in-law led a simple prayer to express gratitude for the new land. Then began the couple-month wait for spring to arrive so we could actually work in this new field.

During the months that followed, I started penciling some numbers. I knew rent was a big part of the annual expense on those respective fields, but it also was a huge cost to purchase the land. I was curious to see how long it would take to break even on the investment.

For simple math, let’s say it was $200 per acre to rent each year compared with $6,000 per acre to buy. With just that comparison alone, it would take 30 years before you start coming out ahead buying the land versus renting it. That doesn’t take into account that rent price will likely continue rising with time, but I also didn’t calculate the interest and property tax that has to be paid on the purchased land.

So why do we buy land?

How many scenarios exist where a person or company buys something that won’t hit its breakeven point for three decades? My husband is 30 years old now, which means he will be 60 years old at that point…hopefully in the process of planning for his retirement.

The biggest benefit from a business standpoint is that owning land presents a greater opportunity for quality soil management. With rented land, we never have a guarantee of how many years we’ll be farming it, so the fertilizer (nutrients) program is designed for a year-to-year basis. With owned land, we look more holistically at the soil to sustain the nutrient quality continuously.

The other reason is more from a personal standpoint. This investment honors the history of this as a family farm. The road we live on is named after our family because of the legacy it started MANY years ago with this farm. We are fully rooted here and committed to carrying on that tradition. There is no way for us to know whether our children or other relatives will take over the farm after us, but we are keeping that in mind even if it means more sacrifice for us now.

Farming doesn’t easily compare to anything else – it’s a family business, a lifestyle, a responsibility to society.

The decision to buy land doesn’t easily compare either. It’s a business decision that requires analysis of cash flow, tax implications, etc. It’s also a personal decision that will affect family members and others. For us, farmland is kind of like our “yard” – it just happens to span a few country blocks.

We are grateful for and humbled by this opportunity.