Offseason Projects/Look ahead

by **Duck Engr** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 6:42 am

I’d heard of roundup resistant, but never the bird-repellant variety. That’s interesting. I’ll check into it. Thanks for the info Rick.

by **Duck Engr** » Sat Jun 22, 2019 10:06 pm

Ended up having to mow and burn the dove field last week to get it clean enough to plant. Took advantage of the low (for June) humidity day last Sunday to light it up and it burned great.

Received 1.3” of rain on Wednesday and another tenth on Thursday to provide just about ideal planting conditions today. Used our no-till drill to plant 7 acres with one side of the drill planting proso millet and the other planting browntop. There was already quite a bit of volunteer millet sprouting from when we burned last weekend, so we backed off to 15 lbs per acre seed rate. Plan to put some 20-10-10 on it before the next rain and a Grazon/2,4-d mixture once the stand gets up enough to survive it.

Oh and it was hot as balls today.

by **Rick** » Sun Jun 23, 2019 5:14 am

Field's looking good. And you're certainly right about yesterday's weather: boiled my brain and old body to the point of being puking sick breaking a couple miles of levee top brush - and found nary a nest.

by **Duck Engr** » Sun Jun 23, 2019 12:04 pm

Oh man, take it easy out there Rick! Only added insult not to have found a nest.

by **Duck Engr** » Mon Jul 01, 2019 12:12 am

Made a trip back up to the farm Saturday to inspect the progress of our millet plantings and spot spray some water grass with glyphosate from a hand sprayer in the duck pond where the rice is planted (that roundup ready rice is really gonna come in handy next year Rick).

The millet was disappointing. We had good moisture when we planted it but Mother Nature has blessed everyone in our area with rain since then, except for us. Most of the browntop was up to a pretty good stand but the proso is nowhere to be seen. It was leftover seed from last year, and like a dummy I didn’t do a germ test on it before planting. Fingers crossed for a shower this week but the chances look slim.

As for the duck pond, there was a lot more of the needle-like water grass as i call it coming up than I’d seen the previous week. Rice is 8-10” tall and is easily outrunning the shorter, moss-like weeds beneath it. Out in the center I saw quite a bit of sesbania sprouting, so I’ll try to make it up there one day after work this week to put some 2,4-d on that before it takes over.

If I do rice again next year, I’ll double my seed rate after seeing the thin stand.

by **Rick** » Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:16 am

Depending on the variety, I suppose, the ducks might well prefer the sesbania. We call what grows here "indigos" (curly and plain ol'), and the most successful ag land hunters I know farm for it with moist soil management, rather than letting a farmer grow rice they could profit from on their place.

by **Duck Engr** » Sun Jul 21, 2019 9:42 pm

I’ve given the sesbania a try the last two years in my “moist soil” experiments and my local ducks don’t agree with the palettes of your flyway ducks evidently. Hoping that’s not the same with my rice experiment.

by **Duck Engr** » Sun Jul 21, 2019 9:52 pm

Made a quick trip up to the farm this evening after returning from the beach. We’ve had 5 pigs visit the trap each of the last two nights, so I went up to set it in hopes of catching them tonight.

We had gone several weeks without seeing any on camera, but our neighbors had some guys come run them with dogs to get them out of their corn and beans last week. That seems to have shaken things up. The hog guys killed a pretty big boar right on the property line between us. Glad he’s out of the woods.

Browntop on the dove field is finally getting a few rains. Forgot to snap a pic of it. It has been struggling with our dry spell. We just couldn’t catch a break it felt like. Our neighbor 5 miles down the road has had 29” of rain this year as opposed to our 22”. Very frustrating. The proso millet didn’t turn out well as mentioned before. We went back over the top of it two weeks ago with browntop. Our half inch shower this week finally made it sprout. We could still use a good soaker or two.

by **DComeaux** » Sun Jul 21, 2019 9:56 pm

That is a big nasty beast.

You're more than welcome to our daily showers and downpours.

by **BGkirk** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:37 am

Give it a few weeks and hogs will be back. Pressure will make them move for sure

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

by **Duck Engr** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 11:57 am

Caught 3 sows and a little one last night. 5th didn’t quite make it in the trap. Oh well, better than none.

by **Duck Engr** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:41 pm

Good eating size. We gave them to one of the local mechanics we’ve used before.

Managed to snap a pic of the browntop. You’ll notice the drill-wide gaps where the proso was a dud. More volunteer browntop filled in than I expected.

Last but not least, stopped by the wood duck hole to check on the rice. It seems to be doing fine, though could use some rain (fingers crossed for tomorrow’s front). 2,4-d knocked out the sesbania.

by **Rick** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:29 am

Duck Engr wrote:2,4-d knocked out the sesbania.

Bummer.

by **Duck Engr** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 8:37 am

No worries from me. That stuff just gets in my way the next year when I try to plant. There will be plenty of food for the few woodies that grace is with their presence.

by **Rick** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:32 pm

Best ag land blind I know of "farms" nothing but indigo/sesbania.

by **Duck Engr** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:17 pm

I may try it again one day, but not while Dad is still alive and kicking. He complained about having to look at it every time we rode horses by the pond last year while quail hunting. Hard to get an old rowcropper on board with “farming for weeds”.

by **Duck Engr** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:54 pm

As a follow up to a pintail I shot back in January, I did indeed decide to get it mounted. Blake Wilson at Wings over water studios did what I consider to be a pretty nice job. I hung it high in my office (second pic) so I can look up and smile at a pintail silhouette while I work.

by **Rick** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 3:53 am

Duck Engr wrote:Hard to get an old rowcropper on board with “farming for weeds”.

I can see that. Lot of the old timers here have not so fond memories of pulling indigos from their father's rice fields.

by **Darren** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 7:00 am

Great mount!

by **Deltaman** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 9:56 am

Beautiful mount DE!!!!!
Not many things prettier than watching them cup up and drop down out of the heavens

by **Duck Engr** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 12:18 pm

Thanks guys.

by **Duck Engr** » Tue Aug 13, 2019 11:40 pm

Though we have many far more pressing items to be dealing with at the farm, Dad has decided our twice-foiled impoundment levee should be moved to the top of the list. And what the retiree wants, the retiree gets. We’ve decided to implement an engineered spillway this time in hopes that if we do encounter another “100 year storm” (that happened to us in back to back years), it’ll go out the spillway with no levee repairs required. Nothing planted this year, so we’ll likely leave the valve open to give us more storage in case of a rain event.

Dad has been repairing levee breaches with the dozer this week while I’m stuck at work. I’m planning to take a laser level from the office out there this weekend to work on getting the spillway elevation set. Then it’ll be geotextile fabric, a load of 57 stone and some rip rap to finish it off.

by **Rick** » Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:44 am

I'm not nearly smart enough to even know what I'm looking at there, but hope it does the trick for you.

by **Duck Engr** » Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:53 am

Thanks Rick. It all amounts to just a low spot in the levee with fabric and rock on top to hold the dirt in place. This little 7 acres catches between 180-200 acres worth of runoff, which translates to a lot of water coming in. I hope this will alleviate our problems even if we get a monster rain with unsettled levees..... again.

by **Johnc** » Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:51 am

Duck Engr wrote:As a follow up to a pintail I shot back in January, I did indeed decide to get it mounted. Blake Wilson at Wings over water studios did what I consider to be a pretty nice job. I hung it high in my office (second pic) so I can look up and smile at a pintail silhouette while I work.

Nice bird

by **Duck Engr** » Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:11 pm

Thanks John

by **Duck Engr** » Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:16 pm

Here is a sketch with some actual dimensions (not to scale obviously) and some rudimentary calcs that I think I kinda half remember from my water flow class 10 years ago. Washington state university was kind enough to put a weir flow calculator online so I didn’t even have to dig out my civil engineering reference manual. Allowable flow is a little under calculated flow, but i assume there will be some seepage through the rip rap. Worst case we eat up an inch of freeboard.

by **Johnc** » Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:13 pm

that taxidermist does good work

I looked at that website,i would stick with him

by **Duck Engr** » Fri Aug 16, 2019 7:26 am

Johnc wrote:that taxidermist does good work

I looked at that website,i would stick with him

That is my plan. He blew my local taxidermist out of the water.

by **Duck Engr** » Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:33 pm

Finally made it back up to the farm yesterday for the first time in nearly 4 weeks. Did a check on the dove field and the browntop has really come on strong. The drought slowed it down, so we may not be as ready as I’d like for it to be on opening day. Ran a handful of doves out of the edges of it. The proso is already dried down and starting to drop. I guess this proso forgot to listen to the package when it said 75 day maturity.

We’ve managed to dodge significant hog damage, so far...

The duck hole rice is another story. One little pocket of it (in the shade where it wasn’t baking in the sun during the dry spell) has come on pretty good but the rest looks to be a dud. I think it just ran out of moisture since our neighbor was shortstopping all of my rain showers.

The CEO has been hard at work on the impoundment levee repair across the county road. I took the laser level out yesterday evening and we set emergency spillway elevations. Just have a couple more inches to shave off by hand and we’ll be ready for nonwoven fabric. It’s only 20” from top of levee to bottom of spillway, so my 57 stone and rip rap idea is out. Looking at either pouring concrete, pouring redneck concrete (sacrete lining the spillway then watered with the 3 pt hitch sprayer), or sandbags (don’t know if I have time or fortitude to fill 300 sand bags. It’d be an easy call for concrete if we didn’t have a dry creek bed to cross to get there.