Spring is in the air and soon the planters will start rolling across McLean County, dropping seeds into the ground to produce the amber waves of grain that will be harvested next fall.
How do farmers know it’s time to plant? Find out from Paul Schuler, a farmer from Lexington, in this week’s Farm Fresh Podcast.
Catch the Farm to Table segment every Wednesday at 12:45 p.m. on WJBC Radio.
What do grain farmers do in the winter?
Find out from local farmer, Carl Neubauer, in our last Farm to Table segment from 2015. Happy New Year!
Hear the segment every week on WJBC at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesdays.
Harvest went by quickly on the Lay farm this year. In fact, the crops were out in about half the time compared to a typical year thanks to suitable crop conditions, good weather and cooperative machinery.
Hear how the corn and soybean yields turned out with Jason Lay plus check out one way farmers are working to farm smarter by exploring the use of cover crops in this week’s Farm Fresh podcast, episode 11.18.15.
Tune in every Wednesday at 12:45 to hear the Farm to Table segment on WJBC radio.
If you would have told me my senior year of high school I would be farming with my dad six years later, I would have laughed at you and told you not a chance. At that time, I thought I wanted to be some big wig executive in the Chicago area.
I went for that dream and upon graduating the University of Illinois with a degree in Finance and a concentration in Real estate moved to Arlington Heights to become a Commercial Real Estate Credit Analyst for a bank up there. Let’s just say you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl and I moved back to Central Illinois in a year.
It was a very difficult year for me and it didn’t take me long to realize it was the farm I was missing and nothing else. I was blessed to obtain a position at a bank in Bloomington, Ill. after returning home.
At that point I realized farming was in my blood and I was right where I wanted to be. Dad and I have been working together ever since. Weekends are spent side by side with my father and typically you will find me under a piece of machinery covered in dirt, oil and/or grease. Both he and I, the 5th and 6th generations of our family farm, work full time jobs in addition to our grain farm operation.
Some say farming isn’t a girl’s world, but for me it is and I know several other farm girls ready to prove those words wrong. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything and I am beyond blessed to be a farm girl from Central Illinois.
Check out photos from Harvest 2015 on the Huffman Farm.
[envira-gallery id="480"]
[envira-gallery slug="huffman-harvest-2"]
Combine Driver’s Ed: McLean County grain farmer, Gerald Thompson (right) hosted a group of local mom’s for a harvest field visit in early October and handed over the reigns of the combine driving for a few minutes to guest Sarah Mathis. Photo by: Catrina Rawson, IFB Photographer
Empty fields all around central Illinois indicate the 2015 harvest season is coming to a close. Excess rain in June caused concern early in the growing season, but did it make a big dent in corn or soybean yields?
WJBC host Terry James catches up with McLean County grain farmer, Gerald Thompson to find out how the soggy summer and dry fall factored into the end results for this year’s harvest on the Farm to Table segment episode 11.4.15.
Catch the “Farm to Table” segment every Wednesday at 12:45 p.m. on WJBC Radio.
