Farm update in Eastern NC (Spring Planting)

[duplin97]

So far so good. The corn is anywhere from knee high to waist high after a month since being planted. Most wheat is ready for harvest, even a few jumped early and harvested in the past week. All of the Soy Beans are popping up and sprouting.

Today was fairly busy as farmers rushed to their fields in the early morning in fear of an afternoon storm. Most of the guys were running the Green and Yellow tractors, though there were two Red ones (Case and Massey Ferguson) . All of the farmers were also using a 3 tank setup (1 in front), 2 on the sides compared to the 2 tank Saddle setup I saw a ton last year. I was also surprised to see how many of the new JD 8000 and 7000 series were in the fields planting. For those of you who aren't familiar, alot of the Eastern NC farmers used the 44-- and were hesitant to upgrade for years. To add on, this was also my first time seeing no 44-- series in the fields this year.

[duplin97]

Also got a John Deere Sprayer working the fields. A 4720 I believe.

[nielsenfarms]

Wow, never would of thought they had equipment that big down here, this coming from a kid from Iowa. I'm up near Salisbury, where are you?

[duplin97]

I'm in Duplin County near Kenansville on a small family farm. They got bigger tractors in the east since they have bigger farms. Most farms in the West can only stick to cattle raising and live stock since the ground is so hilly. But in the east where it is flatter most farms can have larger fields which call for larger tractors. By the way most of these fields are rented out, so a farmer may work 10 or so fields that are each 20+ acres. Any other questions feel free to ask.

[Southern]

That is true. On my end I'm at the base of the foothills. There are a few big farms in the area, but our fields are small. So in all he will farm a lot of fields to get his size. Most fields are in the 10-80 range. Rare to see any larger, but they are there. So you have a lot of fields to get up around 1,000 acres like the big boys runs in my area. One farmer has 1500 acres and he works in 2 different counties to get that amount.

I been towards the coastal areas and love seeing those larger farms out there.

[duplin97]

I forgot what county, but they had a 3 150 Acre cotton field somewhere in Eastern NC. I went down to concord then into Lenoir and loved passing all of those cow farms, saw a lot of old Fords too.