Crops

Our traditional cropping system is a winter wheat/fallow rotation with spring grains planted to clean up fields that have downy brome.  We are currently experimenting with different cropping systems.  These include: 1) three year rotation of winter wheat, spring barley or yellow mustard, then a year of fallow. 2) four year rotation of winter wheat, two years of spring crops and then a fallow year. 3) a rotation of winter wheat, fallow, winter canola, fallow, winter wheat.

The picture above is fall canola (Olsen) blooming in May and June.  We also raise yellow mustard in rotation with our winter wheat to control grassy weed infestations and disease problems. Varieties Soft white winter wheat varieties include; Stephens, Gene, Madsen, Rod, Weatherford and a club variety named Temple.  Spring crop varieties of wheat are Dirkwin, Alpowa and Penawawa.  Baronesse and Steptoe are the two spring barley varieties we grow.  Triticale has also been a very good spring crop with Pronghorn and Trical 2700 as our current varieties.

Harvesting
Harvesting with a John Deere 9600, equipped with a leveling system built by John Rae of Touchet, WA.  Our grain wagon is an A&L 850S pulled by a Caterpiller Challenger 65.
 
 

Spring Seeding 2000

Direct seeding with our air drill in April keep us very busy.  The air cart is a Flexi-Coil 1720 with a 525 gallon liquid fertilizer tank mounted on the front.  The dry box holds both seed and dry starter fertilizer.  Air delivers both the seed and dry fertililer together in the seed row.  Liquid fertilizer is placed below the seed. 
The drill frame is made out of a Morris chisel plow, converted into a floating hitch design used parts from other implements.  The air delivery system is a four run single shoot with Flexi-Coil Stealth paired row openers.  On row packer wheels are mounted on each shank.  Width of the machine is 33 feet with a 12" spacing on three rows.