Eagle kill

I was out working in the barns when I heard a ruckus going on.  It sounded like the ravens, and they sounded pretty mad.  I walked out of the barn and started towards the fuss, and I couldn't see what they were diving on, but it was something.  

The last time that the ravens got this upset it was a bobcat that was traversing my property.  I could see that this time it was an immature bald eagle or a golden eagle - not sure which.  both of them are kind of brown from a distance.  the bald eagles don't turn black with a white head until maturity.  

 When I got close enough to see I could definitely see that it was a golden eagle.   I've never seen one around here, and it's a pretty impressive bird.  And it had caught a pretty impressive lunch!  I made the identification because of the leg feathers.  Bald eagles have different leg feathers even when immature.

 The eagle spooked before I got close, and so I walked over to take a look at its kill.  A young canadian goose, maybe 12 or 13lbs.  Probably less than a year old.  Considered taking it back to the house because goose is just delicious, but decided that I'd let the eagle claim its prize - if the ravens allowed that!

 Bird was warm and limp.  The kill appeared to be through the back of the bird.  No marks on its head; all of the talon wounds were in the middle of its back between the wings.

 In the picture below you can see the eagle watching me to see what I'll do.  When I retreated the eagle came back and resumed its lunch.  the eagle is on the tallest tree, on the second big branch down from the top.  Looks like a little black dot.  Maybe 500 yards from where the kill is - far enough to be safe from any danger, but close enough that the eagle eye can keep a good watch on me.

Rain, rain, flood, flood

I make my rounds today, make sure that everyone has food, clean bedding and dry, and that all of the livestock is in a barn and safe.   the pigs have a lot more sense than the cows; on a really rainy windy day they'll just stay in an snooze.,  But the cows are stupidly curious, and really aren't deep thinkers.  So I'll make sure they don't get into trouble.,  Nothing like chasing cows around through a flood.

I live next to an uncontrolled river, and it's an active one.  When I purchased this farm I was a little disappointing that I had a 12-15 foot bank on the side of the river, but after a few years I've honestly wished it was a little higher than that!

The nice thing about the floods is that they come and go pretty quickly; if we get water around the house it's usually only there for a few hours.  For a short period of time I live in a houseboat!  (well, at least it looks that way - glance out the window in any direction and see nothing but flowing water!)

The conditions are pretty good for a flood.  We've had heavy snows in the mountains upstream of me, and now have warm air and heavy rain falling on the new snow.  As you can see in the graph up there the river rises pretty quickly; at 8-9 feet it goes to coffee-with-milk color because it's churning up the bottom, and at 12-13 feet it goes darker because it's chewing up the banks and you see trees going down the river.

at 14 feet you see big trees, and lumber - bits of sheds and houses.

at 15 feet you're seeing lots of big trees and the river is running through the trees across the entire valley with the occasional dead cow or parts of houses.   I've seen 15 feet+ three times since i've moved here, and it's pretty impressive.

Long term weather forecasts

I look at the long term weather forecasts every year at this time to see if there's anything that it shows me.  Given that the forecasts are months in advance, there's no guarantee that they'll come through, but I figure it's better than flipping a coin, and I'm hoping that a couple of hundred years of studying the weather has made our forecasts more accurate over time :)

NOAA Long term weather forecast site

Click on the caption below the picture to get to the site. 

The long term forecast shows a slightly greater chance of warmer-than-usual weather this summer, and that bodes well for my planned corn crop, which gives me a little more leeway in the seed choice I make.  

I don't really trust the forecasts all that much, but it is nice to have a rational reason for making a pick, even if it's a pick that I would have made on gut feeling alone :)

Calculating corn: The corn math

It doesn't seem like something that you need to put much thought in when you grow a vegetable.  Most people have grown something - tomatoes are popular - and some folks have even put in a garden and tended it over the season.

When I grow corn there's a lot of choices to be made; what ground, how much, what seed, plant and row spacing, fertilizer and other amendments, and cultivation/weed control.  

My corn is grown for my own operations - that is, my intention is to feed it to my own animals, so I've got a captive market for it - read I don't have to sell it to anyone else, no marketing costs - and to be economically viable I have to compete against my other source of corn - feed mills, which sell pretty expensive corn.  a bushel of corn that a farmer might sell for $4 in Iowa comes to me as hog feed at $0.20/lb - or roughly $11 a bushel.   Of course hog feed has ingredients other than corn, but it's mostly corn, and since that's relatively easy me for me grow, I'll grow it myself. 

Corn requires a certain amount of heat per year to grow - growing days.  This is the number of days where the temperature exceeds 50 degrees.  In this area, western Washington, from April 1st to October 31st there's about 2,450 heat units available.  That is, the number of hours that the temperature exceeds 50 degrees.     

Link to the full page for this seed

These heat units are part of how I make the decision on which seed I choose.  In this case variety P7213r has less heat units than I'm likely to have in the year, which means that there's a good chance that it will fully mature in the growing season that I have available to me.  The tradeoff between an "early" - read short growing season - variety and a longer growing season variety is yield.  This particular corn will theoretically produce less grain than longer-maturing corn, and I have to fight the urge to be an optimist and plant slower varieties because if it doesn't work out I don't get much of anything.  So I'll look through the varieties available for corn that has a heat unit requirement that is about what I'd expect from an average year.  If you'd like more information on CRM and GDD (growing degree days) check here.

To figure out what I had for growing degree days I have a weather station that I installed when I purchased the farm, and I use that data, and I refer to the WSU agricultural extension and to the weather underground.   My local climate is a bit warmer than is reported by the weather sites based on the readings of my weather station.  

Note on the weather station:  I've gone through a bunch of them over the years and this is the one that has lasted the longest of the bunch.  I want a consistent reading and I don't want to have to fiddle with the weather station, and this one has done the job.

 Note:  I have no connection with Pioneer, I'll just note that it is a very popular choice with the local farmers and seems to do well in this area.  

Speaking of that, copying what other farmers are doing in the area is something that I will do, too.  If you're using the same sort of seed you'll find it at local supply sources, too.  No need to ship it in from somewhere, and supporting the local businesses is generally good policy for me.

  Farmers tend to pick what works for them, and in the area they are.  So I'll watch carefully at local farms and note when they're tilling, when they're planting, when they're weeding and when they're cultivating.  I've got a guy who leases ground across the street from me and he is provided me with a heads up whenever there's haying weather.  When I see his mower arrive I break mine out :)

Having selected the seed, density plays a role.  If I were planting sweet corn I'd be going for large ears - that's what the consumer wants.  for grain corn I want the maximum number of corn kernels per acre, which for modern corn seed means planting very close together.  Each seed provider has a recommended seed spacing, and row spacing.  Most corn is planted in 30" rows, and most corn is planted between 5 and 9 inches apart in the row.    

At 5.5" apart and 30" rows, you'll be talking about 37,600 seeds per acre.  at 9" apart it's 23,000 plants per acre.  So why wouldn't you just plant them close together?   

Plants per acre, 30" rows

Depends on the seed, and the goal.  for big ears you want them farther apart.  for maximum kernels, you'll probably want them closer.  Not every seed will germinate, and not every corn plant will make it to maturity.  So I'll plant a little closer to make up for the losses, and I'll accept the smaller ears for more ears and more grain overall.  

My first year planting corn I had some ravens that thought it was great fun to pull my little corn plants out by the roots.  And they pulled thousands of them out over a two  month span.  I couldn't figure out what was doing it - I kept coming out and finding corn plants drying on the ground, pulled out like green onions.  I finally staked out the field and found them doing it one day.   It stopped when the corn got big enough, but I lost the better part of an acre to the pesky birds.  

Corn seed comes in bags that contain about 80,000 corn kernels per bag - roughly 50lbs, but it varies.

So 1 bag of corn seed at $220 will plant about 2.3 acres - so I'll be spending roughly $4,000 for corn seed.  Add to that the cost of any soil amendments like lime, fertilizer and then the costs of tillage - fuel, repairs, labor and wear-and-tear, and , and the total bill gets pretty big pretty quick.  It wouldn't be too far off to guess that it might cost me $250/acre to get it all done.  

For a list of commonly performed soil preparation and what people pay for that work hired out in iowa, click here.   I can't really hire it out here because I cannot trust the local guys to do it.   If I want corn I have to do it myself.

So in return for the $250/acre, I'll get between 100 and 150 bushels of corn at harvest - 5600 to 8400 lbs, or between  2.25 and 4.2 tons of corn.   At the low end the corn is costing me $111 a ton.  At the high end it's costing me $59 a ton.  

So if the harvest works out, and the weather cooperates, and there's not a big drought, and plagues of insects don't appear, and the cows stay out of the corn and so on, I'll have feed at about 1/3rd the cost of what I'd normally be paying, which will add about $30k to the bottom line of my farm, which isn't bad pay for a part-time job.   

And that's the corn math.