A Year in the Life of a Farmer: Farm drying out after heavy rains

Follow the Kindred family throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the family members and the decisions they make on their farm.

ATLANTA, Ill. — About eight inches of rain soaked the Kindred family farm over four days and Ron and Jay were preparing for mowing on Monday morning, June 28.

“The air conditioner in this tractor has been leaking water. It hasn’t been draining right. We blew all of the hoses out and it still wasn’t draining right,” said Ron while he and his son, Jay, were putting the cab’s headliner back into place.

“We decided to investigate a little further and took the headliner out. Where it comes out of the condenser and goes to drain down the post of the frame of the cab, it was going uphill instead of going downhill. So, gravity was working against us. We decided we’d drill new holes in there and let gravity work for us. It’s been a little bit of a challenge getting the headliner out and put it back again, that’s for sure.”

Once the project is complete they’ll hitch on a seven-foot mower and mow the waterways and along the top of road ditches.

“We’ve got all of our roads to mow and that to look forward to. We have a good of mowing ahead of us if we ever get dried out after all of the rain we had this weekend,” Ron explained.

It was getting dry in this central Illinois locale prior to the heavens opening up.

“We were to the point where we could use a rain, but we got a little more than we bargained for — eight inches between Thursday morning (June 24) and now (June 28),” Ron said.

“They’re predicting another one to two inches here over the next three days. But we’ve been surprised how well the ground has taken it. Kickapoo Creek here was as high as I ever remember it being. Sugar Creek at our McLean farm was out about as bad as it’s ever been and it washed part of the road out.

“Overall, I’m sure the rain will do more good than harm, but we’re going to have some areas it’s going to harm, as well, that’s for sure. It was needed. The timing wasn’t bad because since we talked last we got all of our corn and soybeans sprayed and we were in pretty good shape that way.”

Ron and Jay were making adjustments on their four-row planter for some replanting when we met four weeks ago. They replanted about eight to 10 aces of corn and soybeans combined.

“Most of those areas we replanted are probably under water again. So, I don’t know if they’ll amount to anything or not. We got them up and they were growing, so we may get something off of them,” Ron added.