Provider: Ryan & Hope
Pjesky
Profession: Farmers/Ranchers
Hometown: Goltry, Oklahoma
Fall 2008
September 2008
September is the month when the days start getting shorter and the ground
temperature starts cooling enough for wheat to germinate and sprout. This
means it is time to start planting wheat. During the early part of
September we are busy getting the wheat drill and trucks ready. The
first part of September was unseasonably warm and dry but on September 11th
we had over 10 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. As is always the
case in life, too much of anything, even something good, is a very bad thing. Big
rains like that are very destructive. Fences were washed away and terraces
were washed out.
Beginning on the 18th we started planting. This task took much longer
than usual because we had to fix the washouts and problems created by the
rain. We completed planting on October 5th. During wheat planting
we are extremely busy. Our days usually start before daylight and involve
loading the truck, getting everything situated in the field and then driving
the tractor all day until dark. Planting wheat involves one tractor
pulling a cultivator that tills, evens out and firms up the soil. The
second tractor pulls the grain drill. Our drill is thirty feet wide
and plants 48 rows of wheat in one pass. We seed wheat at a rate of
90 lbs or 1.5 bushels per acre. Drills hold 45 bushels of wheat at
a time. We use a truck to bring wheat to the field to fill the drill.
October 2008
We use the month of October to clean up and put away or park all our tractors
and machinery. Also, we do a lot of maintenance on our corrals where
we start calves. Welding and replacing anything broken, bent or rotten
due to constant use. This year we spent a considerable amount of time
going out into our tender, newly emerged wheat checking for Army Worms. Army
Worms are multistage little, cut worms that, when small, remove chlorophyll
from plant leaves. When the worm matures, they just eat the whole leaf
and kill the plant. Several neighbors lost whole fields of wheat. We
checked throughout the month but only had one field become infested. We
caught it in time and hired a crop dusting plane to spray the field.
October presents a difficult challenge when starting cattle. Weaned
cattle stress even harder when we have temperature swings from day to night. This
is October in Oklahoma; it may be 80 degrees in the day and 35 degrees at
night. This is tough on calves and tends to make them more susceptible
to high fever and pneumonia. October is the time when we begin our
winter routine of checking and feeding cattle daily as the cattle become
our main focus.
November 2008
November is the month we begin turning cattle on wheat pasture. A
little over six weeks have passed since we’ve planted the wheat and
it has emerged, tillered out and now covers the ground with lush pasture
which contains over 20% protein. This is great for cattle to eat and
rapidly gain weight. One thing we also do in November is haul hay from
our supplier back to our farm. We haul 20 big round bales weighing
1500 lbs each on our semi-truck in each load.
The economic conditions facing the country also have affected us here on
the farm. The price of wheat has fallen by nearly 50% since harvest
in June and the price of cattle has fallen nearly 25% during the same time. Cattle
prices falling is both good and bad news for us. The good news is the
light calves we are buying to sell in 6 to 8 months cost less but our bigger
cattle are much less profitable. Fuel prices have come down which is
great news as we drive 50 to 60 miles per day checking and feeding cattle.
We spent a great Thanksgiving with family stuffing ourselves with food. Thanksgiving
is a time when we should all reflect how lucky we are to live in a free country.
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