Mike,

If you were on the old highway (22 & 7), it is like running M-21 vs. I-69. Thanks for taking the skinny roads and doing some rubber necking. Hope you enjoy windmills - someone has to...

To the question - there's some dirt around Adelaide Village that was "ridden hard and put away wet" for a couple of decades after it came out of pasture, and is the type of soil that you just cant do that to. It is pretty heavy soil, had the tilth beat out of it pretty well, and lots of soybeans. Now, when corn is grown on it, and it gets a bundle of water on it in June (denitrifying a bunch of N), then turns dry later on, it gets ugly. There were also some farms out there that I understand either missed sidedress, or had it done really wet. Now that it is quite dry, there is a big crack in the soil with smeared sidewalls.

There are some VERY good farmers in that area, the ones that have never had 'monkey dirt'. I'll stack them up against just about anybody as managers. However, there have been some operators in the past that can wreck an anvil with a toothpick, and some of those farms will be a long time recovering.

I'm east of there about 20 miles. Welcome is warm and beer is cold if you're in the area again.

Ken