Reflecting on 2025 Crop Season to Prepare for the 2026 Season

If you’ve been following along, it’s no secret that we like to listen to podcasts. I was listening to “The Singular Agronomics” podcast the other week and a phrase they kept repeating stuck in my brain like a jingle. 

“Poop make corn green!” 

Thinking about that phrase while simultaneously thinking about our 2025 crop season on the farm really got me thinking. Starting with corn because corn is king. We averaged 220 bushels/acre. This is great considering the conditions and inputs that went into growing our corn crop in 2025 when our current APH is 196 bushels/acre. 

To kick off the season, we did a spring application of dry fertilizer on all of our acres. At planting we applied starter fertilizer in row to give the corn a good start to get going. We then did a mid season application of nitrogen to give the corn more nutrients to keep growing. We are super thankful to our cousins that helped us accomplish dirt work, planting, spraying and N application while we were busy keeping the rest of the farm running. We wouldn’t have had such a great year without them! 

Another factor that affects yield can be planting date, which again wasn’t in our favor because our corn was planted late in the season (which tends to be common for us). All of our corn was planted on June 12th. For those of you that don’t know, it's not the best practice to plant late corn because it puts the corn plant in some possibly stressful conditions during vital growing points. Later planting dates usually occur for us because we are completing hay silage chopping for ourselves and other area farmers. Some years this later planting bites us in the butt and others it works out. Either way we cannot do much about this variable at this point. This year we planted the corn late and then it rained 3+ inches 4 days after. Despite this, our stands did well and the heat of the summer allowed the corn to grow rapidly and catch up to some of the other corn planted earlier in the area. 

One input I haven’t mentioned yet is the manure that we apply on all our fields each year. Truthfully that may be the one input that has been consistent over the years. We apply cow manure to our fields that we clean off our cattle lots and bed packs throughout the year. Whether that be beef or dairy because we have both on our farm. There are two huge things that manure does for your fields. First and foremost manure provides essential plant nutrients that crops can utilize once they are planted and begin to grow. The other big thing manure does is build the structure of the soil and add organic matter. Long story short, a good soil structure and organic matter is important to help root growth, water movement, nutrient movement, fostering microbial movement, etc. All of this brings us full circle back to “poop make corn green”. Manure has always been an absolute constant on our farm. That manure is putting vital nutrients that crops need back into the soil for the plant to utilize during the growing season. We believe that manure has been a big part of our success in raising corn. 

Our corn acres aren't the only ground that gets manure. We also spread manure and fertilizer onto our soybean acres. Those nutrients are just as vital to soybeans as they are to corn. This year our soybean crop averaged 60 bushel/acre. The only type of fertilizer our beans got in 2025 was a pre-plant granular fertilizer. They got planted at the same time our corn did around June 12th. They were planted, sprayed with a herbicide early in the season to control weeds, then forgotten until harvest rolled around. We had a few problems with the beans laying down toward the end of the season because they got too tall. But, for the effort they got this year, we were not displeased with the outcome.

Considering all of that, it's time to think about what's next for 2026. Crop inputs just keep getting higher while at the same time farm income isn’t rising nearly as quickly if at all. 

Like every other year manure application is in full swing right now. Cattle manure is being applied to our fields. The more we can get on our fields before we plant the better off the crops will be. We will also be applying a spring application of dry fertilizer once the weather and fields permit for us to do so. The next thing we will continue doing is an in-furrow application of starter fertilizer at planting. Giving the seed the extra boost to emerge out of the ground and grow is important to achieve a great stand on the crops. We are also going to continue to split-apply nitrogen at different stages in our corn crop during those essential stages. All in all we are going to be running a very similar year to 2025 due to the success of the year and where the financials of everything are at. 

When it comes to a plan for our soybeans in 2026 our dad is tossing around a few ideas, but hasn’t settled on anything yet. Bryan is about to start a partial rebuild on our drill, which has us thinking about drilling our beans this year with a shorter row width. A shorter row width will help our late beans canopy quicker which will then aid in weed pressure. The next thought would be doing a broadcast application of a nitrogen fertilizer to help during the vital growing season. Decisions will be made soon, but for now we are just trying to prepare for the season in whatever way we possibly can. 

With rain in the forecast for the next few weeks we are hopeful that we can soak in as much moisture as we are given because we don’t want to be planting with drought pressure on our tails. Mother nature can either be a friend or an enemy of a farmer. We are blessed for a successful 2025 crop season and look forward to what we can accomplish in 2026. 

We hope everyone will have a successful start to the season! 

Olivia, Tabby, Gina, & Kendra