Midsummer brings waiting and writing, ‘shave and a haircut’

MONTICELLO, Ill. — With planting and harvest completed on his farm for now, Eric Miller has plenty to do as the middle of summer arrives.

Miller participates in a variety of research trials on his farm, with private companies and public universities.

All of those trials require monitoring and recordkeeping, something that Miller pays careful attention to.

“Recordkeeping is important. I think that’s kind of why people like working with us. We have multiple forms of verification when we are doing trials,” Miller said.

That recordkeeping is both high tech and old school and it starts at planting.

“When we are planting a trial and applying fertilizer, we are creating maps with the equipment. We still do it the old-fashioned way, as well, for verification. We do a lot of flagging and staking so we know where the different trials are at,” he said.

“At harvest time, we have that combination to work from, the visual cues to where the trials are at and then we can take our planting and fertilizer application maps and transfer that to the combine so we know we are in the correct plots.”

The Millers also host field days and researchers on their farm throughout the year. Getting the farm ready for those events is what Miller’s father refers to as “a shave and a haircut.”

“It’s like inviting people to your home, you clean your house before you have company over. You cut the grass and clean up the shop floor and that type of stuff,” Miller said.

This summer, the farm is getting an extra spruce up in the form of a new shop.

“We are building a shop and an office to better host field days and researchers. So, that is under construction and we are in the eighth inning of that project, a lot of finish work going on,” Miller said.

There is always the regular summer jobs of fungicide and fertilizer applications and repairing and modifying any machinery that needs it.

Miller said “average” is probably going to be the best way to describe the crops of 2024 in his area.

The winter wheat crop was average and he said the corn crop may use that adjective, as well.

“I would say it is looking at least average. This will be the story all year,” he said.

Miller said planting dates could make the difference between yields that are average and those that are excellent.

“The very earliest corn is tasseling and pollinating now. There are also fields that are literally knee high. It just depended on how those spring showers came through and what guys could get done,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean the later planted doesn’t have yield potential. It will need good weather conditions at different times.”

Miller said a small planting window in April allowed some farmers to get corn planted early.

“Our best planting conditions were just a handful of days in the third week of April. That’s the corn that is pollinating, that corn has had good weather,” he said.

“I would say that has really high yield potential, same as the soybeans that were planted during that time. They are starting to canopy and they look like they have a lot of yield potential, as well.”