Andy Edson is the sixth generation to live and farms east of Nashua in southern Chickasaw County near its border with Bremer County. Edson lives with his wife, Amber, and daughters, Adie and Audrey, on the farm. He focuses on growing corn and soybeans over about 2,000 acres. This year will feature about two-thirds corn and one-third soybeans.

We started planting more beans than corn, although by last Wednesday and Thursday some corn went in. Some area farmers planted as soon as they could while others like us are taking a little more time. We’ll see in a month who was right. Everything worked smoothly. The planter was ready. Soil temperatures are flirting with low 50s and high 40s, so we want to see that up consistently. Anyone who wanted to till was able to do it. We had a lot of hail in the 1.3-inch rainfall April 17, so it took a while to melt off the lawn. We needed it, so it was welcome.

We had no field activity this past week as we were rained out. It’s quite a contrast from last August. I noticed a little bulldozer work in nearby fields, but that’s about it. We stayed focused on fixing tile lines and other rainy-day chores. I’m hoping the wind will keep drying out fields as we got another little shower this morning and we’ll see what happens tonight. I hope it all stays standing.

We have been on about a two and a half week break from planting. I think things will finally start going again today (Monday). I did see some guys out spraying over the weekend. The weather looks really good to get a lot of the work done this week. The cover crops have really been growing. Some early soybeans are starting to emerge. First cutting of hay should be pretty decent in our area. The rain is really helping that out.

Overall, we had a good week. A lot of new corn seeds were part of about 250 acres of replanting corn. The jury still seems to be out on whether to leave it alone for now or do a little more. Planting of corn and soybeans will be done in a few more days. Fields are a little dry in parts, but for the most part they look pretty good, though there are some sandier spots.

We replanted a few spots for soybeans. It was in areas that got too wet and sat in cold spots. Pretty much everyone in this area is done or nearly done planting. Some corn also was replanted in sections originally planted before the heavy Easter rainfall. Some sprayers are active in our area. I imagine we’ll see side-dressing done this week. In the last two weeks, crop emergence looked really good. Recent heat made it jump up out of the ground. We had two light rains last week that shut us down a little early a couple nights. We’ll get planters cleaned this week and put away. We’ll look at side-dress and maybe haul some grain if there’s time.

We got 2.4 inches of rain this week so there probably won’t be much activity until after the holiday, but it sounds like next week things should pick up between post-spraying and side-dressing. Not everything we’ve planted is quite out of the ground yet, but you can see a lot of it (corn and soybeans) from the road. I have been spending the week picking up the pieces of a busy two-week planting window, doing maintenance and starting to put away some of the spring tools.

Much of the work recently included a lot of side-dressing and sprayers and hay cutting. I tend to wait a little bit on side dressing as I just started yesterday. We made good progress on corn spraying and we’re about to start on beans. I see some weed pressure in outside of edges of fields. The inside areas are decent. The earlier-planted crops need to get sprayed. This next week we will keep on side-dressing. If we get forecasted rain we can make a good push when it dries up again. The ground’s pretty dried up right now.

It’s going pretty decent. I hauled some grain last week. I’m plugging away on side-dressing, but I have a ways to go yet. Crops look decent. Corn spraying is done and I’ve moved on to spraying beans. Hay is down. I’m waiting for the wind to calm down for spraying. Pretty much everything emerged out of the ground, even the later-planted crops. We need heat to get a darker green color.

It’s wet out there. We caught a 3-inch rain last week, so field work has been pretty minimal since. We still have a couple days of side-dressing left to get done as well for spraying, too. The corn has really started to take off since the rains. Early-planted corn in the area is close to thigh high. The rest is above knee high. Canopying just started. Beans are still shorter, at most 6 inches tall. Any beans planted later are about 3-4 inches tall. The beans still seem to be pretty short and don’t have great color. With drought the last two years, we wonder if it’s not a little bit because of chemical carryover. Hoping they take off in the next week or two as well. The week ahead will probably consist of the fixing/cleaning up of equipment and mowing.

Another inch of rain here in the past week which brings us to a total of 7 inches for the month of June. Another week of almost no fieldwork able to be done in the area. But the hot and windy weekend made for a window today for some spraying and possibly some side-dressing before another round of rain tonight. I should be able to get the last couple late fields of corn sprayed. The past week has consisted of mowing lawns, hauling grain and catching up on a little bit of office work. Bean coloring has started to improve over the last week, but the corn fields are starting to yellow in the soaked spots that can't breathe. My early plants in both crops are around V5-V6. That corn’s about chest high while the beans are a foot to 18 inches tall.

We were able to get into the field for some more spraying and side-dressing for about a day this week but otherwise got a few more inches of rain. The last 20% of my side-dressing I’ll have to switch to Y-drops. Weeds are definitely starting to grow in the bean fields. Fields are still showing poor color where they’ve been saturated for too long. Thankfully, still no big machinery mishaps and no hail to report.

I had a busy week — finished up Y-dropping and soybean spraying, though sure there will be touch-ups as weeds are growing fast and the edges probably won’t hold. Everything looks pretty good otherwise. Corn is growing some, and we definitely received plenty of moisture with 1.3 inches of it Saturday night. Tassels are showing on early-planted corn. We all got our wet spots overall, but we still have a pretty good crop. We missed out on hail for the most part in the area this season.

We got another 2 inches of rain July 10. Y-dropping is mostly finishing up in the area and will switch to fungicide application this week. Corn planted mid-April has a mostly extended tassel on it. Worked some on bin cleanouts this week and hauled grain. Keeping lawns mowed has been a hard enough task on its own the last couple months. No breakdowns or major storms/damage the past week thankfully. The Chickasaw County Fair was last week — always enjoyable to walk the barns and exhibits and see the youths' hard work pay off.

We got 1.7 inches of rain here last Friday night. Thankfully I had about two-thirds of my bean acres sprayed for fungicide. The rest might have to go on aerially with the forecast this week. Looks like guys who are trying to get back out may be able to do that today or tomorrow on their sandy ground. I’m not seeing a lot of insects eating the beans, so we are holding off on adding insecticide for now. We will see if we need to spray in August like we did with aphids last year. The bulk of the non-early corn spraying should be starting up this week. A lot of tassels are showing.

We got 4 inches of rain last week plus another 1.2 inches last night with some wind that tangled the bean canopy. Still no hail, thankfully. It was just getting dry enough for the ground rigs to get back in, so I'm betting a lot of the fungicide left to do will have to be applied aerially. I should finish up with my fields this week on that front. I took a step back and spent time with family a couple days last week. I will be continuing to haul grain, service equipment and mow in the week ahead.

We got another 4 inches of rain last week. The ground is finally starting to dry out in the area again. I’m thankful that there isn’t more flat corn after the winds that came with the rain. Plenty of trees and limbs came down in the area. Bremer County Fair was dealing with it all last week and actually created an impromptu mud run event for UTVs, which was actually a big hit. I’m cleaning up the last of old-crop beans and then I will keep working on the old-crop corn this week.

Another inch of rain measured in the gauge over the weekend. Some parts of northeast Iowa got multiple inches. Fungicide applications got buttoned up last week for us. The window of blissful ignorance is ending on soybean weed control this season. You can find some broadleaves starting to pop through the canopies as you drive around, especially on the outsides of fields. Some oat fields finally dried out enough to finally get harvested in the area last week. Grain continues to move steadily into end processors as guys start to get fall equipment ready.

Waking up to a flash flood warning this morning. Our area had 2-4 inches of rain overnight with more on the way this morning. Southern rust has pushed its way into the area but is mostly showing on the lower half of the plant. I heard of some neighbors putting in drone orders to address it on bad fields. I will be mowing, hauling grain and servicing equipment this week.

The biggest thing to happen, we had a big rain Monday last week (Aug. 18) — 3 inches here at home and 20 miles north of us probably had about 6-8 inches which caused major local highways to shut down for about a half day. I’m keeping up with mowing. I notice southern rust showing up on the outside of corn fields in the area. A neighbor who went down to Greenfield noticed it was more prevalent there. This week will be just continuing to work through machinery to get ready for fall. We like to get out early to harvest when possible.

We had 0.2 of an inch of rain this week. It’s been probably our best weather week of the summer — perfect for cleaning out bins and working outside. I’m getting down to the last of old-crop corn. I’ve got one field showing the effects of rust. Most of that will be our first field to harvest. I’m keeping an eye on it, but I’d say we’re still two to three weeks out.

As the last of the old crop got hauled in we switched our focus to maintenance on harvest equipment. Thankfully the biggest surprise so far has been a mouse getting hungry on a combine fuel gauge wire. If only all fixes were that easy. Heard of multiple people getting ready to chop silage later this week in the area, otherwise field activity has been minimal. Probably still a week or two from combines rolling here.

I have made good progress on getting ready for harvest this week. We got through most of the equipment without major issues. I still need to get through the bin site but hand checked an early-planted field this morning and it tested 20%, so I imagine we’ll try to go out soon, weather permitting. Not many combines going in the neighborhood yet. Silage is getting wrapped up.

I have made good progress on getting ready for harvest this week. We got through most of the equipment without major issues. I hand checked an early-planted field this morning and it tested 20%, so I imagine we’ll try to go out soon, weather permitting. Not many combines going in the neighborhood yet. Silage is getting wrapped up. We were able to combine this weekend on a field of pre-Easter planted, one-fungicide pass, 107-day corn that took the rust hard. Moistures were variable but averaged 23-24%. Yields were average to below-average, which I expected from the disease pressure. We had hail in the area last week that took off up to 10% of some bean fields.

We ran out of corn dry enough to go on, but beans dried down into an acceptable range this week. Too quickly, like the last couple years, we saw moisture drop 3 points in a matter of hours with the heat. I hoped for above-average bean yields and so far have seen more average numbers. Coming off the last couple years, I’ll hold my complaints though.

We got 0.7 of an inch of rain overnight, bringing a welcome break after a good run on beans. We've got a day or two left to get finished up. This area is probably 80-90% done on beans. Yields were average this year. Moistures have been around 11-12% in the mornings, 8-9% by the end of the day. Heard reports of corn dropping as much as 7 points in a week with the heat, so maybe we won't need as much LP as we thought this year. We plan to harvest corn this week.

If you look hard enough you can still find a few bean fields that need to be taken out, but most finished up this past week. We’re 25% finished with corn. Yields have been variable, but there’s a lot of field averages 15-20 bushels above average (with one-pass fungicide). I’ve heard reports of two fungicide passes paying off well this year and some nightmares of those who didn’t spray and lost 50-plus bushels per acre. We will keep plugging away on corn this week. We have been able to put a lot of it straight into the bin at 15-16.5%.

We had 1.3 inches of rain this week with some reports in the area of 2-plus inches. It was great to get a little time with family while we waited to dry out. I’m about a third done on corn, still finding some dry enough to go straight into the bin. In the later maturities, moisture bumps up to 19%. Yields are still variable — most average to slightly above. We will continue to attack the dry corn and hybrids I’m most worried about going down this week.

We had another good week of progress. I’m just starting to see some guys get finished up in the area, though there’s still plenty of corn to be picked. I’ve probably got a week to week and a half left depending on the rain. Mid- and late-maturities are still testing 17-19%. Yields are variable, but we have still been able to find some fields well above average. After two years of drought, that’s a welcome change. One of the local end-users finished up their pile this past weekend so we’ll see if the area storage starts to tighten at all. Thankfully, we’ve had no major breakdowns. We will continue to chip away on corn in the week ahead.

Corn harvest is finishing up in the area. I’ll hopefully be done by the end of the week. Lots of tillage and baling being done. I saw some really good yields out of the late-maturity corn hybrids this year, probably 10-15% above average. Moisture stayed in the 18-20% range. Looking forward to some much-needed quality time with family this weekend.

Finished up with corn harvest last week. It was a bit of a limp to the finish as the shaker frame in our combine broke at the side rail. So, that will be a major repair this offseason. Overall corn ended up 5-10% over average for us, which we were happy with. It seems like every year over the past five years has given us unprecedented weather, and this year was no different. I think that the old adage "rain makes grain" still holds true, especially in corn, but warmer summers will continue to force farmers to evaluate their disease management plans. At this time, the biggest things we are evaluating for next year are how we can improve our speed of planting and if maturity boundaries can continue to be pushed to the later side in both crops.