Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 17, 1990 TAG: 9006170071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OTTER HILL LENGTH: Medium
So far, this year is headed in the opposite direction - great picnics, sluggish corn.
Moisture isn't the biggest problem, though June has been stingy with its rain so far. What precipitation it has brought has come in powerful, highly localized storms.
Corn has grown slowly at the Turner dairy farm, about eight miles south of Bedford, because of cooler-than-normal temperatures. Feed corn, planted the last week in April, is a couple of feet tall now, but it should be higher.
"As long as it's got that moisture, corn likes 95 degrees. If the moisture ain't there, it'll cook," said Billy Turner. "The corn really took off for a while last weekend, when it got so hot and humid."
Conditions could be far worse. Turner, his father, Ray, and his brother, Jimmy, know that cool nights will soon give way to warm summer evenings, spurring the corn.
Oddly, as the growing season blossoms, there is little to do for the crops already planted. The Turners focus on other tasks. Since planting the corn six weeks ago, the Turners have harvested 40 acres of barley and 10 acres of wheat for silage, then applied thousands of gallons of liquid manure to the fields. The grain-stubbled fields will be fallow until fall. The Turners have mowed, baled and stored hay and mended fences, repaired machinery and started a vegetable garden.
Last week, on his 40th birthday, Billy Turner drove a combine slowly over brown fields of barley. Inside the glass-walled cab, Turner leaned forward awkwardly, his chest brushing the steering wheel as his right arm nervously fidgeted with a yellow-handled lever. He was steering, accelerating, braking, and raising and lowering the combine's harvester to suit the bumpy, rolling field - all at once.
As grain dust and diesel fumes whirled around the cabin, Turner had to focus on the swirling sea of grain immediately beneath him. The combine gobbled up the barley, snapped the grain head off the stalk and spewed chopped chaff onto the field behind. The machine stored the grain, which was periodically emptied into a truck.
The barley grain will be fed to the Turners' 180 dairy cows. The straw will be baled and sold to landscapers, if there are buyers. If not, it will be left to compost back into the soil.
Billy Turner's job, painstakingly slow, noisy and dirty, was made more difficult by high winds and heavy rains that had previously buffeted the fields, toppling drying stalks of barley. Much of the grain lay close to the ground, beyond the reach of the giant combine's threshers. Sometimes, the blades emerged from the stalks with a pile of red clay.
Driving 2 mph, cutting a meager 13-foot-wide swath in a 40-acre field, and stopping occasionally to clean dirt from the harvester seems like a futile job. It will take two days to finish.
But the barley yield, according to Jimmy Turner, is excellent - about 100 bushels per acre.
Billy Turner harvested the barley in fits and starts through the week, working only when the stalks and grain were dry. Heavy morning dews and a weekend rain shower slowed the work.
Waiting for the dew to evaporate one day last week, the Turners tore out an old wire fence that separated 300 feet of two pastures. The fence kept heifers of different ages - some pregnant, some not - apart, and kept Holstein bulls from mingling with cows unless invited.
But a wire strand is not much of a challenge to a bull, and the powerful males have had their way with the fence over the years.
The Turners bought freshly cut locust fence posts - 6 inches by 6 inches, and 8 feet long - at a local sawmill and began to erect a new pasture fence. This fence of locust posts and oak planks would be sturdy, maybe even bull-proof. But with the job not half done, with only eight of the heavy yellow timbers set, the lunch hour and the combine beckoned.
Ray and Costolene Turner spent last week in New Orleans at the Southern Baptist Convention.
Costolene, who usually feeds her husband and two sons at noon, left behind a pile of provisions to keep the two farmers fed in her absence.
But lunchtime found Billy and Jimmy Turner at the Body Camp Store, sitting on stools, ordering up cheeseburgers and french fries and washing it down with soda pop.
Too much hassle to cook, or even to reheat, Jimmy said. Lunch lasted 20 minutes. Forty minutes after he ordered his cheeseburger, Billy Turner was behind the wheel of the combine.
by CNB