What I am wondering… is if the dog days of summer arrive earlier than they used to. Although, as June winds down here in the Valley of the Flowers, it’s actually cooled down nicely with a little shower, the first in nearly two weeks of increasingly hot temperatures. It produced not squat for moisture, but… The National Weather Service is saying 50% chance for tonight, although I’m beginning to wonder. It looks like a pair of fives, to me.

<I was wrong, we got a nice .3”>

As I’m sure they’d happily agree, the Latinos have it right with the que sera, sera take. What will be, will be. All the same, I hope we’re not quite done with rain yet.

Things could be a whole lot worse, and dang near were, except we got a lifesaver rain of 2” after none whatsoever through half of April and all of May, and then another nice half inch, which plucked us out of an ugly start. But I suspect it’s about done. ‘Tis the season.

But I’m OK with that. Mostly. As if it would matter…!

We’re growing some alternative crops, in case you just showed up here through the massive and so-far-free intricacy of the World Wide Web. Camelina and Golden Flax, mainly, although I took up the seed availability slack with some canola, and finished with lentils. I just couldn’t see any point whatsoever in planting wheat. Not here, not now, but maybe in a few years after we have the nitrogen built up again, not to mention organic certification so one gets something approaching New West prices for the stuff, in the teens and up. Per bushel. Versus… well I guess regular stuff is over four bucks now.

woo hoo.

You should see the contrast between the camelina and canola, though. But hey! Thanks to Al Gore’s fabulous invention you can!

Now realize, this camelina is very much an experiment. The only other attempt in southwest Montana, until now, was a fella down the road who followed (it appears to me) bad advice and broadcast the stuff in late winter. February or thereabouts. Although, here’s a virtual tip of the hat for being a pioneer. It’s a recurring theme in that family.

But the weeds took over, and they nuked it. Disced it under. I reached the decision to do that to the rest of my canola yesterday. Bah. Humbug! But it just isn’t worth a crap, not even near the half stand I judged it at earlier. That’s the rule of thumb, you know, if you have half a stand you’re better off than starting over. Canola has failed me on that standard twice now.
Canola’s touchy stuff. About the second or third year we grew it up north, we set a near-state record “dryland” yield, of ~2400 pounds/acre. Of course it rained 20” that summer, about double “normal”. That sixty acres paid my wage for the year! Although, that was back when living expenses were less than half of now, but anyway…

But I had one major wreck with it, and a couple of sorta’ “average” years. Two wrecks now, I guess. The first, back in about the late eighties; I had 140 acres that had come up just like Iowa, one of my first real air seeder alternative crop successes. But then the gophers found it extraordinary stuff indeed! You could make a salad from canola leaves. The stuff was just up, a half inch or so high, and in a span of about three days, the gophers just ate that field. Wheat can take a certain amount of nibbling, but if canola gets bit off that’s all she wrote.

It was too late to plant anything else that year. This was back before anyone had even considered planting lentils or something to build nitrogen, and just wrote a check instead, which come to think is still how it works mostly! Those checks are getting just way bigger, though.

At least Halliburton is doing well.

Anyway, that field essentially wound up double summerfallowed, until I planted it to winter wheat that fall before escaping to the Bozone. It went 80 bushel to the acre, which most certainly set multiple records, except no one remotely cares to keep track of such matters out on the gumbo flat below the rimrocks, except for me and a few neighbors. It was pretty astounding, though. I remember the neighbors, who hadn’t yet discovered nitrogen, cut all day to fill a semi. Gads… But obviously double summerfallowing isn’t practical. Unless the gophers decide you’re going to!

Getting back to my canola/camelina comparison, though, it’s quite striking.
They both had a tough go of it. We seeded early, mid- to late April. Seeded into initially good, but then daily dwindling moisture, with none to follow for about six weeks! The flax was the first seeded, and came up nice. Still looks good. I’m kinda tickled with the stuff. It’s plenty tall to harvest, and has lots of seed pods. A shower would sure help ‘em fill… Besides, I may bale up the residue and sell it to hippies to build shelter from. I think I know a pretty good advertising venue…

The camelina, though, came up kind of spotty at best, especially the second field seeded. We had two different varieties, so kept things separate. Like I said, it was drying out by the hour during seeding season, which is most unusual if not darn near unheard of here in Springhill, Montana. Considering the stand was kind of sparse, it has filled in amazingly. In fact, if we’d had maybe one more rain, I’d say the stuff is thriving! After the rains finally returned this month, quite a bit more came up, but the late stuff will fizzle, mainly. As could the lentils I seeded kind of late, but then you just plow ‘em under, or if they aren’t going to make much if any seed you just leave it for the elk to eat, and plant right back into it next spring; perhaps eighty pounds of nitrogen to the acre ahead of the deal. Or… you can write a check for, what, sixty bucks per acre or so?! Now you tell me…

This striking difference between species I keep trying to tell you about is a stark demonstration of the superiority of genetic diversity, I believe. Canola is highly genetically engineered. And sure, breeders select for desireable traits over generations, and it’s pretty established yields will improve. But you do hit a point of diminishing returns, I believe, when everything has to be just so for it to work. And in cases, if you don’t have quite optimal conditions, the stuff just tanks on you! Farmers find that quite annoying…

In any case, things are most definitely not just so on the Rockpile Ranch. I’d go into the soil test results, but then I’d start losing folks for sure, unless I had a supermodel prancing through my crops! But then Baxter, aka Spud, is not too bad looking, don’tcha think?

So in this case, I choose to interpret this data to support my contention that a plant that is basically a weed is thriving, versus one that would not have naturally occurred without genetic manipulation bites the dirt, as it were. In a quite literal sense, once I borrow a disc for an afternoon.

One can say that this is not a statistically reliable sampling, although I would counter that for here, for now, the evidence is conclusive; 100% so. That’s good enough for me.

Yay!! <cartwheels...> The times, they are a' changing...

Jon Tester just proved all the pundits and predictors wrong, with a crushing 2-1 margin of victory in yesterday's Montana Primary! That means an organic farmer, former meat cutter and music teacher will be going up against Conrad Burns in the general election (unless Burns is in jail by then).

David Sirota says it best: "Tonight is a terrible night for Conrad Burns, not only because one of his primary challengers got almost a quarter of GOP votes, but because Democrats now have Jon Tester carrying the flag against him. Burns barely eeked out a victory last time against Schweitzer - then an unknown first-time candidate. Now, severely damaged by his connections to high-profile corruption scandals, Burns is facing a Schweitzer-style populist - but one who is better-known than Schweitzer was during his dark horse Senate bid in 2000. It’s Tester Time - and that means Burns’ days in the Senate are numbered."