Fall tillage, manure applications nearing completion

SHABBONA, Ill. — Fall fieldwork is near completion for Berkeley Boehne after some much-needed rain slowed tillage for some of his fields.

“We’ll wrap up tillage in about another two days and the rain we got actually helped to soften the soil,” said Boehne, who together with his brother, Vaughn, raise corn, soybeans and wheat on their farm in DeKalb County in north-central Illinois, where they also feed pigs and operate a custom manure application business.

“The rain varied — we got close to 2.5 inches,” Boehne said. “There was a pocket north of Shabbona that seemed to be a little wetter, about another inch of rain.”

Boehne is doing a little more chisel plowing this year than normal.

“We feel the ground is compacted,” he said. “Minimal tillage has its place for highly erodible ground, but the flat, black, heavy soil needs to be loosened up.”

For a couple hundred of acres that will be corn on corn, Boehne is doing moldboard plowing this year.

“We’re doing that because of residue, insect pressure and to spread the risk a little bit,” Boehne said.

“We know it works, but everybody got away from it because of timewise and erosion-wise,” he said. “But there is a time or place for moldboard plowing and I see a few more guys going back to it.”

Boehne started harvesting his 300 acres of double-crop soybeans on Nov. 11.

“They are at 16.5% moisture and I did the worst of them and they were running 15 to 25 bushels per acre,” Boehne said.

“I have a lot better ones to harvest, so I’m guessing they will average around 30 bushels per acre,” he said. “A 25-bushel average is worth it for us to do double-crop beans.”

Both lime and dry fertilizer spreading is complete for Boehne.

“We’re going to pass on anhydrous applications this fall and we’re going to go back to summer side-dressing,” he said. “We’re getting a little late, but probably more than anything, we decided that due to the field conditions.”

And, Boehne said, he was able to spread a lot of manure on his crop ground this fall.

“Where we spread manure, we count that as our side-dress for next summer,” he said.

For the custom manure application business, Boehne’s goal is to complete applications by Thanksgiving.

“We’re wrapping up the late fall cattle guys for the second time so they can make it to spring,” he said.

The warm, dry fall conditions have helped to reduce the time needed for manure applications this year.

“Normally we have to drain the drag lines at night because it freezes,” Boehne said. “That takes a lot of time.”

Boehne has two tanker applicators and a drag line crew.

“The drag line is better for swine manure because when these farms are full it’s close to 7 million gallons,” Boehne said. “We don’t want all that truck traffic.”

“We started out west and this is our fourth sow farm and we have one more to go for the season,” he said. “We have a handful of lagoons to do and we like to leave them to the end because they’re usually pretty close so there’s not a lot of hose out which we can manage better when it’s cold.”

If they are set up in large fields, Boehne said, he can apply about 1 million gallons of swine manure per day.

“The manure is quite watery because they do so much washing, so at 10,000 gallons per acre, we’re barely putting on 100 units of nitrogen,” Boehne said.

“For cattle manure, it’s about 50 units of nitrogen per 1,000 gallons of manure,” he said. “At 4,000 gallons per acre, that’s 200 units of nitrogen.”

Boehne started the custom manure application business in 2008.

“At that time there were a lot of bad applicators, but we bridged a lot of the gap with the sow farms and proved to these guys that manure is the way to go,” he said. “I’d say our manure this year conservatively was a minimum of 25-bushel yield advantage versus commercial fertilizer.”

For the drag line system, a pump is located at the sow farm and a second pump is in the field where manure is incorporated at least six inches deep.

“It is all controlled by the tractor driver with an iPad,” Boehne said. “And we have a man or two driving the lines and checking everything.”

There are filers on the pumps, as well as the applicator.

“Our biggest concern is the coyotes at night because they like to chew on the hose,” Boehne said. “So, sometimes we have to roll the hose up at night.”

Boehne enjoys working with the customers of his manure business.

“It’s a lot of work, but we have our core group of customers that have been our customers since day one,” he said. “And it’s an art, too.”

Additional jobs on Boehne’s list for the fall include trimming trees and tiling projects.

“Weather permitting, we will do some tiling repairs and tiling of small areas,” he said.

Looking forward to the 2025 growing season, Boehne is planning about the same crop rotation as this year.

“We may do a little increase on the corn acres since we have a more grain efficient setup now,” Boehne said.

“We are not planning any drastic changes,” he said. “We’re fortunate we had great yields with the low prices, but the ag sector needs to tighten its belt a little bit.”