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Making Memories by Making Hay A nostalgic look back at the labor, sweat, and family memories made during hay season — from hand-stacking square bales to the arrival of the game-changing round baler.
Raising a crop takes more than seed and soil—it takes faith. Just like raising kids, farming is full of stages that bring joy, stress, hope, and awe. From emergence to canopy and tasseling to harvest, each milestone tells a story of patience, persistence, and purpose. Here’s a look at the defining stages that make farming not just a job, but a calling.
The 1980s Farm Crisis: Will We Go Back to the Future? Ushered in by the USA Olympic hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” and the flight of the space shuttle, Americana was running wild. The decade of excess featured a soaring stock market, booming GNP, and iconic movies and fashion. This was the era of Yuppies… the age of video players… when MTV actually played videos. The 1980s were totally awesome, for nearly everyone but farmers.
Too much rain at the wrong time can ruin a season. In May, Delta farmers were hit with nearly double the average rainfall, flooding fields and delaying crucial work. From missed nitrogen applications to replanting setbacks, timing is everything—and this spring, Mother Nature threw a major curveball.
Beef Is More Than a Business, It’s a Passion. Few professions capture our imagination like ranching. There’s an undeniable romanticism attached to cowboy culture. Taylor Sheridan has made a career depicting it. And let’s be real, they don’t make movies or write songs about pork and poultry producers. Western lifestyle is at a fever pitch. Brands like Ariat and Wrangler are thriving. And so is the cattle industry. Beef prices are enjoying record highs. And when it comes to producing beef, nobody does it better than the American cowboy. US cattlemen produce over 21% of the world’s beef supply – 28 billion pounds annually – ranking #1 in the world. Yet they do it with just 6% of the world’s cattle herd.
"Any corn plant that doesn’t emerge within 12 hours of others is a weed.” Immortal words from an immortal farmer. My friend Steve Albracht. The brash Texan certainly had a way with words. And with corn. I called him the Ric Flair of corn growers – he held as many National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) yield contest titles as Flair has wrestling championships. And he was just as bold. Visiting his Hart, Texas, farm was akin to visiting that of Francis Childs or Roswell Garst. Fast, uniform crop emergence and singulation weren’t just a goal; it was his obsession. He wanted every plant in the entire field to emerge within eight hours. Studies show that plants emerging 24 hours later can lose up to 25% of their yield. While some corn hybrids may be called racehorses, they don’t close on each other like racehorses do. Slow emergers and runt plants will never catch up to early risers.
Strawberry Sweet, Corn Still Sleeping: In celebration of National Strawberry Month, I visited Catesa Farms, where flavor—not shelf life—is the top priority. Meanwhile, back on my own farm, the corn is taking its sweet time to emerge, reminding me that in agriculture, timing is all about temperature—not the calendar.
This time every year, hemming and hawing would rage on at the Nichols Farm. Dad and Uncle Gary would not only agonize over when to plant, but how deep to drop the seeds. From “It’s been awfully dry, we better wait for a rain” to “It still feels a little wet, maybe we should run the field cultivator over it again” (gulp) to my annual favorite: “But If we get a beatin’ rain, those tops will turn into a layer of concrete.” Prompting, “Then we’ll have to rotary hoe.” Ah yes, the rotary hoe. A toolbar affixed with several blades resembling weapons thrown by Ninjas: rotating steel wheels featuring curved teeth. It’s used to break up crusted soils (and in some cases to incorporate herbicide) formed by those beatin’ rains.
Circa late-1990s. I was sitting at Inness Farm Supply, a plate of BBQ on my lap, listening to the Monsanto rep carry on about the advantages of Roundup Ready Corn. After hearing all the benefits, I asked THE question. “Won’t this accelerate weed resistance?” She looked at me like she wanted to summon security. Then she emphatically assured the group that resistance was not a possibility. I just smiled and replied that nature always finds a way. It did. In 2000, resistant horseweed was discovered on the East Coast. Today, 18 weed species across 38 states are resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
Dean’s response was predictable: ‘What in the **** are you thinking, Fred? You never plant beans until May!’ Five months later, that same field produced my highest-yielding soybeans ever. Turns out, planting early isn’t crazy—it might just be the smartest move I’ve made.
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