Planting wheat

[prepguide]

Starting putting the first of the winter wheat crop in the ground on Saturday...Just another 900 acres or so to go until it is all sown. Gonna be a long week. At least there is some rain in the forecast for around the end of the week. It has been a terribly dry year here in western Oklahoma.

[Sniper-T]

How much, and what do you have for livestock?

[prepguide]

Six cows, two of which are at the vet right now getting bred and about 40 chickens for egg production.

[Sniper-T]

That's a whole lot of wheat for 6 cows. I would assume you're farming for resale, not sustinance

[prepguide]

both actually, selling the wheat raises a good deal of operating capital for the farm. I should note that only approximately 300 acres of the wheat is raised on this farm. The remaining portion is on several other fields worked by a farmer that I work for part time as needed. Hope I didn't give anyone the impression that all of it was on just this one place, if I did I sincerely apologize. I was in no way trying to be misleading.

[Sniper-T]

No worries... I assumed you were renting a couple/few half sections.

[prepguide]

The farm here is a half section and wheat farmer I do some work for does a total of about 1300 acres in this part of Oklahoma. I drive truck, tractor for him as well as assorted maintenance. Its a nice second income stream and I'm learning a great deal which is a bonus.

[prepguide]

Well we've gotten some rain and it has been great. A bit more than two inches over the span of not quite three days so the ground has had the time to really soak it in. Wheat is already sprouting so fingers crossed for a good crop next year. We didn't do bad this year averaging just under 50 bushels an acre so we'll see how it goes.

[ladyhk13]

BP are you going to plant again this year? What have you done with what you grew last year?

[bacpacker]

I haven't decided yet. I bought some barley and oats at the store the other day. I think I may try them out next. The wheat is not too hard to grow, so I'm thinking I need to work through some other stuff. I do have a few hundred lbs of seed to plant a much larger crop if need be.

I'm still trying different methods to seperate the seed out. I still have some loaded on the trailer awaiting getting finished off. That is a lot more work than everything else combined.

BTW PrepGuide, I grew a small patch 120x20 to try and see what all was involved. I have been happy with the results.

[ladyhk13]

We bought some foraging wheat today for the property. I'm not sure if it says when it has to be planted though. Will have to do some checking but I wanted to at least pick some up. I think we got 400#'s. Should be good to add in the pastures. I'm thinking that if we have to harvest it it's going to be the hard way - by hand. Don't think we'll be able to get the equipment up to the property.

[bacpacker]

I would suggest planting around soon. I got mine in by mid October last year which gave it a few weks to get up before colder weather stopped growth for the winter.