Soil Moisture Recharge

I have mentioned in the past that the weather this fall for harvest was as nice as possible. From the last week in September when we started combining beans until the first week in November there was not one day that we could not be in the field. I am sure that has occurred before but I cannot remember it. Then the afternoon of November 11th it started raining. You can see from the Faribault Woolen Mill Dam that the Cannon River is quite high for this time of year.

If you are going into a wet pattern this to was almost perfect timing. The harvest and fall tillage was pretty well finished. Now we are recharging the soil moisture for next year. It is always nice to go into fall freeze up with the soil at maximum water holding capacity. This will give the crop some soil moisture reserves if we have a dry spell the next growing season. The timing was not quite right for me though. My coop got about 1/3 of my nitrogen applied when it started raining. That is not a real concern as they will just finish it next spring. I should mention that up by Montgomery and Lonsdale they have received a lot more rain then most of the rest of our listening area. There is a lot of tillage that has not been done and even some corn in the field yet. Hopefully as it gets colder the ground will start to freeze and then they can finish. Lets hope they don't get much snow.