Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving traditionally marks the end of harvest in the Midwest.  In the modern world, we hope to have all or most of our fall work done by Thanksgiving.  From planting to harvest, it was  a challenging year in our area.  Very little field work was done last fall, so seedbed preparation and fertilizing was crammed in as early as possible.  Early planting got our corn crop off to a good start, but wet weather, compaction, and possibly heat cut into top production.  Soybeans were planted later but still yielded a record crop at least in Illinois.  In my area, the early part of harvest was still plagued by wetness and ruts, although we at least harvested dry grain.  as Harvest progressed, dry weather became a concern at least for wheat growers who would have liked a rain to get the crop off to a good start.  In our area at least, residual moisture was enough to get a decent stand of wheat germinated.  Today we are happy to have some rain falling to recharge the moisture in the topsoil.  It won't take much to recharge subsoil moisture because we were wet until crops were mature.  I know some areas of the state are not so lucky and welcome the moisture even more than we do. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday tomorrow.  I suspect I will be taking a day off of blogging, but will probably Tweet a few times.