I drove out to Nebraska to visit family recently. My oldest grandchild, Noah, is now a 5th grader. He’d been in school a little over 3 weeks when I asked him if he’d gotten into trouble yet. I asked that because I remember my 5th grade with Mrs. Nina Noser. Between me and my classmates Joel Sackett and Grant Ness, I think we set a school record for getting into trouble in 5th grade. So my grandson Noah answers that after just 3 weeks he got in trouble once where the teacher had to yell at him or scold him or correct him or whatever they do these days. I had to high-five Noah and told him he could be on his way to a record. Come to find out, I got in trouble for doing the high-five. His mom didn’t like me to encourage him. I thought 5th graders needed some kind of encouragement but evidently not that kind.
Noah wasn’t in big trouble. He said he accidently hit a kid. I told him that sounded like a fair excuse but how do you ‘accidently’ hit someone? He said he was running and couldn’t stop in time and ran into his classmate kind of hard. I high-fived him again and that went over like a lead balloon in front of mom. Well he’s a good student and I think my fifth grade record will stand for another year.
I did some roadfarming as I went out to Omaha. That’s where you guess what the fields of corn and soybeans are going to yield based on how it looks through the windshield. I saw pretty good crops across the Midwest. In fact, the Department of Agriculture agrees with me. Looking at the latest USDA crop production report, they see good crops too. And they actually get out of the pickup and walk in the fields to do their guessing.
Corn production across the U.S. is expected to be up 13% from last year, forecast at 16.8 billion bushels; soybean production could be down 2% from last year because of less acres. Average soybean yields per acre could be a record for about 10 states including Minnesota.
Minnesota’s corn expected to have an average yield of 199 bushels per acre (bpa) for total production in the state projected at 1.67 billion bushels. Minnesota corn last year average 174bpa. The national average for this year is estimated at 186.7bpa. 10 states could see record corn yields too. The rain makes grain adage holds true this year. Minnesota’s soybeans are expected to yield 53 bushels per acre, last year it was 45bpa. Nat’l soybean yield projected at 53.5bpa.
During West Concord’s Survival Days, I had the chance to be on the radio again. Corey Harguth, reporter and meteorologist for the Linder Farm Network in Owatonna was broadcasting under the tent at the Muni on Saturday morning of Survival Days. Two of the radio stations in the same building near the Steele County Fairgrounds are the frequencies that I first worked at back in 1974 when 1170 KOWO and 92.1FM KQDE were located across the street from the Waseca County courthouse. 1170 is now KFOW and does sports radio. KQDE is now KRUE. Corey was doing broadcasts from West Concord on KRUE and also KOWZ 100.9.
On the air, we talked about the history of Survival Days and how it came about. This year, highway 56 was closed briefly right before Survival Days just to give a flavor of how Survival Days came about 40 years ago. I also gave Corey a brief history of the town and we talked about the WC Historical Society and how the old school became the Museum. It was fun to be on the air again but I did not get the itch to do it long term again. I did not like getting up at 3:30am to be on the air at 5am. I’ll leave that to the younger crowd.
