hello welcome to Kate's Ag today i am going to be taking you to our wheat fields that we
planted with winter wheat in the fall that i actually helped seed and showing you that
really not a lot of the wheat is growing because of the massive drought we've had here in Montana
we're having a really tough time and wondering if we'll even be able to harvest a crop at all
and the question is to reseed or not to reseed because some places in the field
the wheat is coming up and then others it's just completely bare and we've never really
had something like this go on before would you say dad we've had some bare things before but
nothing like dry out so as you can see this is kind of a patch where nothing's growing and then
over here more is great and see if there's any seeds down here some more patches over there so
now we're going to try and find our seeds and so would you have to reseed this whole field or
just this area if we do decide to reseed this well it's hard to just do little areas kate we did get
a tiny bit of moisture the other night about half an hour here's some for here's a fertilizer pellet
it could be on the side some too find another spot
so as you can see there's a tiny so there is a bit of moisture in this ground dad
well just rained kate two days ago here's a worm going into the soil a little worm
ah yeah don't hurt him okay there's fertilizer right there let's find some seed
oh here's seed right here so if we do get rain this will grow and what we're doing
oh it's growing now see it oh my gosh it is this one is that must have just started coming
wow it's not that deep it's about the right depth that's fantastic are you happy dad
well i don't know that's one there's a trillion now here's another one and it ain't growing
you go over here and there'll be some more in it they're not growing either
so we've been told we are supposed to get some rain so we were kind of waiting it out if we
do get moisture maybe all of this will come up it also might not but we're very optimistic about it
here it is down here we may have to reseed though see none of this grew might be growing now though
or it might not be i don't know you got to make that decision pretty soon see this one's starting
to sprout here oh yeah now dad what happens with because this is winter wheat it has to freeze
in order to produce it yeah it'll it'll it'll freeze it froze every day for the last six months
so it'll be okay you're not too worried about it no i don't know if it's gonna be okay it's
gotta come up and then it's gonna get rained on now how does this affect our harvest some
some down here big spots and nothing growing yeah and all the hillsides and these are cart
tracks for some reason it didn't grow here and now how would this affect our harvest will some
parts of the field be ready much sooner than others well you don't know if this comes up or
not and if you reseed yeah that's going to be a problem would you rip any of the other wheat
out when you reseed yeah that's what's wrong with reseeding is you can't do one without the
other okay this looks like something's starting to grow here what is it is it a wheat or a weed
not sprouting though no it is it's got it's already it's easy another two more yeah
they look like they're some of it's sprouting but was it old sprout and then it died or what
it looks new and all all of our fields are like this massive bare spots and then here you can
see the wheat's coming up nice more wheat in here and this is what it's supposed to be and this is
what the wheat is supposed to like look and this is what the wheat is supposed to look like so
some of our fields or actually all of our fields have these massive bare spots but they also have
the parts of the field that are growing as they should be
that's why it's so hard to decide because you plow up the good wheat
to seed into where the wheat ain't growing we got some other fields we'll look at yes so now we're
going to show you how this has affected all of our fields some of them not all of them not only
this one but you can get not all of them and you can get spotted rainfall as well
but we just haven't had any moisture at all and we didn't get enough moisture from snow
we get about 12 inches of moisture per year and like the majority of that comes from snowfall
last year during harvest time our neighbors combine broke down right here on the road
and everybody used this area to drive their trucks and as you can see it's where
it was heavily compressed and no wheat is growing there so a lot of farmers
make sure that you don't drop over drive on your fields or drive too much heavy equipment because
it compresses the soil and then the wheat or crop won't grow see the cart tracks right here
and this is the air cart tracks from seeding it also didn't grow there and this is our
neighbor's field it isn't just us not just the only bad farmers around that's hilarious dad yeah
even this field has some major issues going on yeah and right along the edge where everybody
drives the truck when they're emptying the field and stuff and look at this hillside here kate
about how it's hardly got anything growing in these big stripes and not much
has grown in yeah this is kind of an anomaly year would you say yeah but then look at this
guy's field here he doesn't have any of this now if i were paying people to seed for me
i'd pay these guys because look at their field gosh i wonder how they got it so perfect i don't
know and you can look all the way down look at these big stripes that don't didn't get
nothing planted in here or it's planted it just didn't grow wow that's actually quite prevalent
more than quite prevalent and like is this something you would reseed because it's only
yeah i was gonna i was gonna go in here and see this end anyway because look up here
what's going on there is hardly anything growing up here this could be wind the wind blew really
hard here this year and took out some of this but yikes that's actually massively a problem
it's crazy just nothing came up yeah and if you go dig it it's all out here you know
as you can see this should all be seeded right here and you can see the green spots kind of
further in the back where the good stand is i like these three passes down the end here
there isn't a whole lot growing here let's dig one and see if there's any stuff here
as a farmer you have really tough decisions to make for what to do in these instances because
growing up you don't really learn that from your family because this is just something that
kind of see this is all wheat from last year that did start to grow and then died off kate
this stuff here that's all wheat that died you know from last year yeah because you can
follow it right down to the road oh so this is the same wheat as that but it all died so this
yeah that's winter killed this has no potential of growing that doesn't no and what is winter killed
i don't know whatever happens to it in the winter here's here's a kernel right here that blew out
of the ground you got here's the whole row right here so it's got to be in here someplace so all
of this was planted in the fall and has now died yes hi dave how are you i'm good thank you how
are you well i'm just looking to see well yeah i don't know there's some wind you can see some wind
yeah i don't even see hardly any of this anymore you can see these big bare spots that we needed
that little rain a little while back we need an inch you know even now yeah i wasn't very far off
i mean when you looked at the radar map you could see the heavy green you know and we
were right on the very edge of it barely getting any of the and then they only got like a tenth
you know east of town here yeah i don't know i don't think there's nothing to do but seed this
thing you know and take a look at that action all the way i got nothing else coming yet either huh
well not here i dug over by the house a little bit and there's some sprouting but
it's you know is it going to dry out before it ever even breaks the surface i'm going to move
north but i'm going to leave that in this thing yes you're going to be in the video
oh no just what you needed Dave you went to school with my dad so you have lots of
fun stories yeah yeah i heard it none we can tell on tape Kate we were good people haha
what would you say it's like being a farmer in these times having to make tough decisions
about whether to reseed that's one of the minor decisions there's a lot worse than these yeah i
don't you know i don't even see it here hardly and i wouldn't thought it would have blowed out
you know we thought we seeded a little shallow but you know we go and dig in places you know and
it's in the low spots like that that it should be growing there down that low it should be
yeah and you dig that up it just like didn't work no but there are cart tracks you can see
them going down here this right here are you experiencing the same problems in your field
actually i just i don't know well it's different everywhere mine's a little later
yours look better than mine actually i thought it's not it's got a fair stand on it really
we needed that rain you know i don't know where is it here or is it not here see here's the seed
and that grew and died yeah i mean it looks like it right yeah
see here's here's fertilizer and it's right there and fertilizer doesn't help unless it rains
and that's you know in the ground enough that's gonna break down now yeah yeah see here's well
everybody you know always oh i think we're sitting too deep and and maybe we are but
we got rain it was super that was a good deal because you take them out of the plants well yeah
exactly but then i think it helps a little bit sometimes if it uh freeses winter kill yeah yeah
we don't see a winter kill like back in the days but this is quite a bit here so this isn't winter
kill like you normally see in years yes could be from wind and it beats it up like winter kill yeah
just got just got cold at the wrong time or too how cold or weak without rain it don't come back
and winter wheat is supposed to freeze but not get too cold what'd you get about shy half i
have yeah just under half that's what i figured then i had that that fake rain in the morning
you know the next yeah or was it yesterday yeah you know you'd wonder if your drill even
planted anything so much of this behind the wheel track or yeah that's what makes wonder
bye don't do anything i wouldn't do Van Horn you don't be leading him astray now Kate haha
oh here's some here kate no i'll try not to be too bad well there's probably a lot that never grew
but but a lot of places it didn't grow and there ain't just dead stuff on top either well if it
would rain an inch or so i i don't think would be all that bad but you know this don't look good
we'll see you later was this winter kill or stuff that just didn't come up i think it was just too
dry for this Kate that's where the lentils were last year oh yeah and that's another contributor
is when you don't give your fields a rest every year and that's something that is not common in
a lot of areas but very common in montana is to summer fallow and what that means is you seed
one year and you have a crop and then the next year it gets a break and then you have a crop
the following year and that helps preserve the moisture in that soil on the year off
so that you'll be starting the next year with a little bit more moisture because if you have a
crop there it's completely sucked out usually and we don't get that much moisture so that's
important to us if you have a good crop rotation you don't experience a lot a huge loss of crop
although in these drought years you really do so what were you saying dad we'll just see where the
seeds at if we can find it this has a crust well feel it it's it's starting to crust you can see it
it's cracking right yeah this is the old lentils that were here see here's the seed right here kate
looks like it might be just popping yep oh my gosh it is how long ago was this seeded
a couple days but i don't know if that's old seed or new seed because it all looks kind of
alike how deep is do you want it usually about an inch what would you say that is
too deep but you know it's deep in some places shallow and others so
you're kind of going for an overall thing oh wow that's pretty good but it wasn't out yet
so now we're checking to see if there's a hose off because we saw a lot of seeds just sitting
on the top of the ground and hoses are these things right here that funnel wheat to the boot
which is what drops the seed out right here and as you can see my dad
did what's called spooling the boots after to make sure none of them were plugged
these drills are all run off of hydraulics and they are what's called an air seeder or an air
drill which means they use air to funnel the wheat and fertilizer through the drill and put it into
the ground so they have pressurized tanks that hold the seed and fertilizer well the boots look
in Kate could be some seeds that popped out on the ground see how much these tips wear oh they do
yeah this is a piece of hardened steel here but the rest of this isn't so this is still pretty
good but then it gets onto this regular steel and oh it used to be here that's a newer one there
that doesn't have as much on it wow my uncle chris seeded this whole area with grass and basically
the reason we did that is so that weeds and other things we don't want growing here come won't come
up and then you can just mow it although you don't even see grass growing but my dad says
wheat grows easier than grass and well no wheat grew here either so i guess that's understandable
this is where you screw this in and when you let the plow down it runs into this and so you adjust
it with this handle here and that's how you adjust the height of your seed in that dirt oh okay
theoretically interesting yeah so it's all manual that part is it doesn't really tell
you the depth that you're seeding either inside no it doesn't that would be a really great feature
yeah they don't cost enough now we need to get that on there too
so another possibility of seed coming out is a hole in the hose and and one of the
leads to the distributor's Kate the pods that distribute the wheat out to the boots thank you
so much for watching today's video i hope you learned a little bit more about the struggle
farmers have to go through in order to produce the crops and the food that eventually ends up
on your table make sure to like and subscribe and you can follow Kate's Ag on instagram k a t e s
underscore a g and on tick tock pinterest and facebook thank you again for watching
and thank you so much for teaching me all about everything dad oh you're wonderful welcome bye