Weather deals had hand
John Ostradka is not one of those
high< rollers you read about in the
national farm magazines. He’s not
one of the young tigers that is
probably going to dominate
agriculture over the neat few
Vo lum at i clll
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2754 Creek Hill Bd. R°2,Wat«nto«^PAl 7 777
Sff SKSSS 717-538-5521
hfnpv s LAPP SOS.MNBERGER SILOS
naUtf o. LArr RFD2,Chambersburg,PA
■ n CAirC RDI, Cains, Gap, PA 17527 717-264-9588
I. ta. 9AIX9 717-442 ; 8134
Rt. 113, Box 200 | * cu/ftPE
SSStt£ HARRY L TROOP Wm-noi
Rt. 1 Cochranville, PA 19330 Myerstown, PA
215-593-6731 717-933-4758
G. HIRAM
BUCHMAN, INC. ERB& HENRY „
Rte. 519 - N. off Rte. 46 EQUIP., INC. DETWILERSILO
. P.0.80x 185 22-26 Henry Avenue REPAIR
Bewdere, NJ 07823 New Berlinville, PA Rt. 2, Newville. PA
201-475-2185 215-367-2169 717-776-7533
GEORGE A. COLEMAN BENNETT MACHINE CO.
Rt. #2, Box 216 1601 S. Dupont Blvd.
Elmer, NJ Milford, DE
609-358-8528 302-422-4837
Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
decades. He’s just what some folks
describe as a typical Illinois far
mer. Eight hundred acres of flat,
southern Illinois cropland devoted
to com, soybeans and small grain.
When I visited with him a few
m
any time
weeks ago, he had $lB,OOO worth oi
soybeans still in the field and the
ground was too muddy to operate a
combine a heavy snow before
the ground freezes and those baans
are lost.
It was one of those years for
John, one of many for a man who’s
farmed that kind of ground all his
life. He takes the possibility of such
a monumental loss with the same
dignity that he accepts the profits
from his 50 bushel per acre beans
already in the bin.
It was the day befo'-e
Thanksgiving and we were looking
over his brand new combine,
tucked safely out of the weather
while he waited for the land to dry.
For months John has been waiting
for the land to dry.
“It started last summer and it’s
just never let up,” he told me.
“That field was ready for soybean
seeding and it started to rain." By
the time it dried out, enough to
plant, John had to go in and plow
again, and it rained ever since
all summer and fall.
That one field, the one that was
too wet to combine, represented a
substantial-loss if the snows came
before the ground froze. There was
just no way John was going to get
into that field without a heavy
freeze.
All through the wet fall harvest
he slopped around in mud up to his
knees, doing what he could to get
several hundred acres of corn and
soybeans into the bin before really
bad weather came along.
He was doing pretty good in the
beginning, until his five-year-old
combine decided to give up with a
blown diesel engine. It was time to
trade anyway, so he went to the
very best. A $llB,OOO machine, not
including the com harvesting
attachment, that has just about
everything you could want, in
cluding 4-wheel drive.
But even that didn’t solve the
problem. It was just too wet, and
that big machine wallowed and
stuck and was pulled out time after
time as John attempted to work his
way through the harvest.
It hasn’t been a typical season,
but it’s not that unusual in that part
of southern Illinois. The topsoil is
not very deep and a subsoil hard
pan prevents adequate drainage.
Driving down those rutter country
roads, you could see field after
field where combines had literally
been dragged down the rows in an
effort to complete the harvest.
Ruts so deep they looked like
irrigation channels were
everywhere, and the obvious
mudholes where combines had
been stuck and pulled out with
wreckers, 4-wheel drive tractors
and anything else available
abounded.
Some farmers were even
equipping their combines with rice
tires special wide tires with
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COMPLETE: ★ SALES ★ INSTALLATION ★ SERVICE
AGRI-
CATTLE - HOG - POULTRY - GRAIN EQUIPMENT
2754 CREEK HILL RD., LEOLA, PA. 17540
PH: 717-656-4151 ★ SERVING PA, NJ and NY
HOURS: Mon.-Fri. 7:30 to 5:00; Sat. 7:30 to 11:30
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 16,1982—D5
FEED WHY USE MORE
WHEN LESS WILL DO?
EQUIPMENT,me.
extra heavy cleats used on com
bines in the southern rice states.
' And even they were failing.
In fact, the only combines that
were having any success at all in
those quagmires were the
relatively small, lightweight self
propelled machines that could
skim over the surface without
breaking through. And there just
aren’t enough of them around
anymore to get the job done.
So John watched the heavily
overcast sky and hoped for a cold
snap. If the ground would freeze,
he could finish in a couple of days.
But if a heavy snow comes first,
forget it. The beans shatter and
lodge and are impossible to har
vest.
Such are the dilemmas of
agriculture. John Ostradka had so
much rain he could hardly plant
Jus soybeans and then he couldn’t,
harvest them. Here on thei
Delmarva peninsula many far
mers didn’t get enough rain to even
make a crop. John has acres he
couldn’t harvest; Delmarva
farmers had acres with nothing to
harvest. And it’s all because of the
weather.
John Ostradka is the kind of
farmer that a lot of other farmers
could admire. He’s successful, has
a good operation, knows how to
grow crops and makes money. He
owns good farm machinery, has a
neat farmstead and an almost new
house all of the outward trap
pings of agricultural success..
But it hasn’t always been that
way and it hasn’t come easy. John
used to farm across the road,
where he milked cows for yeans.
But open-heart surgery and an
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