A compressed 2023 spring season resulted in a June at Landman Farms that saw the last of the beans going in and the first of the wheat heading out.
Sam Landman , a fifth-generation family farmer in southwest Grand Forks County , finished planting pinto beans on June 7, 2023. Landman and his parents, Robert and Karen, also raise soybeans, corn, wheat and barley on the family land that his great-great-grandfather homesteaded 140 years ago.
Landman, 34, is married to Whitney, and the couple has a daughter, Charlie, aged 3. Besides a flurry of farming activity during June, the Landmans were watching Charlie play t-ball and learn gymnastics. The family also spent a weekend in a family cabin on Lake Metigoshe, in northern North Dakota.
Landman works to balance his farm and family life, which was challenging during a short spring planting season that followed a long, snowy winter.
This year, similar to 2022, cold, wet conditions delayed spring planting. Landman planted his first quarter section of wheat on May 5, 2023, then rain fell and delayed seeding. He was back behind the wheel of his tractor pulling an air seeder filled with wheat over a field on the family farm about 15 miles southwest of Larimore on May 16.
A little more than a month later, the wheat , pushed rapidly toward maturity by unseasonably hot temperatures, headed out at about 12-inches-high. That wheat field was one of several of the Landmans' and other eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota farmers that had headed out by the end of June.
“There wasn’t much rain between planting time and the time it was heading,” Landman said. “The wheat is the biggest concern of the crops I’ve planted.
“But I know from experience crops can surprise you at harvest time. I’m not counting anything out yet,” he said.
Source: agweek.com
Photo Credit: gettyimages-fotokostic
Categories: Minnesota, Crops, Corn, Soybeans, Wheat