Wayne Koehler grows corn and soybeans in Charles City with his wife of 35 years, Lisa. He has also been raising oats, and this year will be growing 65 acres of food-grade oats after buying into a farmer-owned oat milling plant in Albert Lea, Minnesota. “We look forward to that challenge,” he said. “The hope is we’ll be increasing our acres of oats and the goal would be to get to a three-crop rotation. We need to get some dedicated oat storage before harvest.” With the oats, he sometimes plants a clover cover crop that will take off and grow after the oats are harvested. He has transitioned to mostly no-till. The Koehlers have three adult children and are expecting their first grandchild in June.

The oats were seeded on March 31 and emerged April 14. Nice growth last week before receiving a light frost on April 20. Last week was an active weather week with some large hail and heavy rain. Our farms were spared from the hail, and rainfall totals for the week ranged from 0.2 to 0.8 inch. I may plant some soybeans this week and plan to spray some burndown for soybeans after a couple days of warmer temps. In my area, most pre-plant anhydrous applications have been completed and I expect quite a bit of pre-plant tillage will be done in the next few days.

The week of April 20 was a productive week for those that chose to plant in my area. Some farmers were very aggressive getting corn planted while others chose to wait. There were some soybeans planted as well. Pre-emerge spraying and burn down for soybeans was done as the temperatures warmed up during the week. We received 0.5 of an inch of rain on Thursday evening, April 23. Many farmers are waiting now for the rain on Monday the 27th and the cool temperatures forecast for the coming week before resuming planting.