November 9 - Class Update

Today Mike Duffy came and talked to the class.

Public Relations: Last week we had committee work time and worked on the strategic issue. We also took pictures of the farrowing building being torn down.

Buildings & Grounds: Our committee with the help from a few other volunteers got the whole west side of the farrowing building down. We also took a load of scrap iron to Bell Salvage and received $250.

Marketing: We sold 1/4 of the 2011 corn crop and 1/3 of the 2011 bean crop for a total income of $106,000 guaranteed for next October delivery. As for our current crop in storage, we has about 1,000 bushels of unsold beans left in the bin so we sold 500 bushels for $12.10 per bushel.We also had a nice surprise of 582 bushels of corn that had been stored in Slater since 2007. Sold that for $5.40 per bushel. Prices are at record setting levels!

Machinery: We've been keeping up with the machinery, but it keeps breaking down.

Customs: We are winterizing the hog barn, curtain repairs, blowing out the furnace, getting the pump ready for manure hauling!

Crops: We're in the process of purchasing seed for next year. We currently have met with AgriGold and Pioneer. Last week, we met with TJ from VanWall and went over our maps from harvest out of the combine unit.

Finance: We are working on our experiential teaching project for Thursday. Other than that we are just updating the cash flow daily and getting departmental things taken care of.

November 2 Class Updated

This week we are having committee work time to be outside and work on out strategic issues.

Public Relations: Last week we started working on our strategic issue assignment and will continue working on it this week.

Buildings & Grounds: We continued tearing down the farrowing building and started to work on our strategic issue assignment.

Marketing: Last week we future contracted 15,000 bushels of corn and 3,000 bushels of beans for next October 2011 delivery. Corn price was $4.93 per bushel and beans were $10.93 per bushel totaling to $106,000 worth of commodity sales.

Machinery: We are working on the chisel because the seal is out. We are also going to take the corn head off.

Customs: We worked on our strategic issue.

Crops: The test plot was harvested last week. We are completely done with harvest now! Still in the process of ripping....rippin and the tearin, rippin and the tearin. We have good dirt!

Finance: We are continuing to update the cash flow including updating the departimental statement.

October 26 Class Update

Last week (October 18th-22nd) we had a short week due to the College of Agriculture and Life Science Career Day that was held on campus.

As for this last week we kept busy working during class on our strategic issues as well as listening to presentations from class members!

Committee Updates:

Public Relations: We were busy last week giving out Experiential Teaching Assignment to the class. They had to write scripts and film videos about what each committee does. Overall, I think the class had fun making the videos!

Buildings and Grounds: We are still tearing down the farrowing building.

Marketing: With the higher grain prices right now, we are looking at selling some of next years crops. We also need to sell a little more of the current crop to cover some of our costs at the end of the year.

Machinery: We are going to be cleaning machinery now that harvest is complete. The committee will be putting machinery away and getting ready for winter.

Customs: Last week we made a video. This week, we are working on our strategic issue.

Crops: Harvest is complete. We will be harvesting the test plot tomorrow with our seed reps. The corn stalks have been baled from the dairy farm as well.

Finance: We are working hard to keep the cash flow updated and we are currently working on getting all the necessary information together for a net worth statement.

10/12/10 class update

Welcome to another beautiful day in the neighborhood.... :)
We have been busy with harvest!  Beans are almost done for us.

Committee updates-
Buildings and Grounds- Tore the tin off of the farrowing bin that we are tearing down.
Marketing-We have held off on selling anymore of our commodities.  Fortunately the prices for corn and beans have increased significantly with over $5/bu corn and $11/bu beans. as soon as we have all the crop harvested, we will make the decision the sell more.  We believe the prices will continue to increase due to the report from the government that came out stating our yields are lower then expected.  Also, we have one 3000 bushel contract of beans filled already.
Machinery-All harvest machinery is running in good shape and tillage equipment is almost ready.
Customs-Working on bills for soybean harvest.
Crops-Almost done with beans, looking to finish tomorrow. Continued to monitor moisture percent in corn fields. Yields are right around 50 bu/a.  Corn will be ready to go as soon as we get done with the beans and switch heads.
Finance-Updated cash flow, we are going to approve bills to be paid and work on our experiential teaching.
PR-We are working on our experiential teaching as well.  We also are taking the class picture on Thursday! :)

October 5, 2010

Today in class, we had a guest speaker. Brad Pfantz from Jansen-Pfantz Insurance came to class and talked about Crop Hail Insurance.

Public Relations: Last week we gave a tour to Helen Olson's orientation class on Tuesday. On Thursday, we took pictures and participated in the Buildings and Grounds experiential teaching activity.

Buildings and Grounds: Last week we had our experential learning activity as well as the Farm Operations Club clean-up day. We taught the class how to construct a windbreak, seed lawn and how to use different chemicals around the farm. 450 clean-up day was a success, we had a decent turnout, but hope for more next time. Overall, we want to thank the class for their help. This week we will continue with odd jobs around the farm.

Marketing: We sold another 1000 bushels of soybeans at $10.43 per bushel. Yields are looking better than expected so it should be an excecptional profitable year considering prices are still above breakeven costs.

Machinery: Soybean harvest has begun and to our knowledge there have only been a few minor breakdowns on the bean head. Our next project will be to make sure the new ripper is field ready as it has dried out enough to start considering some tillage. We will work with the customs committee to make sure everything is ready for them as well.

Customs: We are currently working on our experiential teaching project, which we will present to the class on Thursday.

Crops: We are currently working on our experiential teaching project. This past weekend we were busy with harvest and with no rain on the forecast, we will be busy this week.

Finance: We approved bills last week, worked on the buildings and grounds learning activitiy. This week we need to approve more bills, and it is our clean-up week.

Pictures from the past week....


 
 



Ag Studies transfer students on the 450 farm for a tour





Crops and Machinery committees changing from corn head to bean head

Machinery Committee Teaching, and PR doucumenting w/ video



Beautiful Day in September

September 28, 2010
Today we learned about how to better manage our class.
Public Relations-As a part of the PR committees job description we are communicators, and that is how we better manage and help the farm. Today we gave a tour to the Ag Studies new transfer students and began work on updating the website.
Buildings and Grounds-Last week we assessed what needs to be done for the Farm Op/450 clean-up day.  We worked on the farrowing barn for a couple of ours also.  This week we will be preparing for the experiential teaching presentation and the 450 farm Clean up on Thursday. PLEASE COME we have FOOD when done!!
Marketing-continuing to monitor the daily markets and we are thinking about selling some shortly.  We would like to take advantage of the $11.00 beans, and the $5.00 corn.  We are also looking at our current yields to see how much we have to market.
Machinery-Last week we completed our experiential teaching project.  We presented to the class and taught the class about the 450 farms new combine and some of the new features it has.  We explained how the combine works from front to back and how adjustments affect yield loss.  Lastly we explained how to calculate harvest loss in the field.  Our new 9430 tractor has arrived and it is ready to work.  This week we are working on getting the fall machinery ready to go since the weather is nice.
Customs-We are currently figuring out replacement costs for fertilizer to put back into our corn acers, if we allow and work with ISU farms to bail our corn stalks.  We are also waiting for some dry weather to allow us to get back in the field.
Crops- It rained all last week so we couldn't harvest.  We checked the corn moisture in the bins and decided we needed to dry the corn down. 
Fiance-Last week we worked on getting bills sent out and paid, and we worked on updating our monthly I&E and the departmental monthly I&E.  This next week will be doing the same thing as more bills come though, and we are looking forward to buildings and grounds experiential teaching.

A few pictures.......

Farm tour 9/21/2010

Getting ready for State of the Farm

Yield Checks

Getting some work done!

Storing the grain.

Cheking moisture

State of the Farm

Today, Sept 21, 2010:
Every committee gave their state of the farm presentation today.  On top of everything else we had to do. :) Busy busy busy!
Crops Committee-It is Janie Imming's Birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Also, they started harvest Sept 14th.  The avg. of 180bu/Acres with the moisture between 17-20% at the home farm.
Together the class did yield estimates and it gave everyone a chance to check the crops first hand.
Buildings and Grounds- Have been busy helping clean the grain bins for the fresh grain, and assist with getting a bin equipped with a power sweep.  They began to clean the shop area.  This week they are preparing for the Farm Op club to come out for their fall clean-up day on September 30th.
Marketing- 72% of our new crop sold at this point and corn prices above $5/bu we have potential to have a strong income for 2010. 
Machine-Harvest equipment has been running well.  We have not had any break downs thus far. 
Custom-Recently put up a new hog curtain.  They also recently had a meeting with Swine Graphics, he said things look good so far.
Finance-Updated most of the cash flow statements are continuing to pay bills and manage funds. Looking at communicating with all committees to pay bills and get things that we need to pay payed.
PR committee- Just finished up the brochure updates, now we need to get them printed.  Today we had a tour with the AgEd 110 class.  The class had transfer students and freshman. 
Thanks!

New year! Fall 2010 class

Hello! This is the Fall 2010 Class of 450 students! We are getting busy starting tours, harvest, and learning.
As we get reports from the committees we will update :)
-Public Relations Committee

the end is not the end (period)

If you're looking for a funny commentary, sorry this one takes a slightly different turn.

Four years. Most people don't even work at the same job for four years. What do you do with four years of memories that suddenly come crashing to a halt?

the friends.

the parties.

the freshman 15.

the first all nighter.

the VEISHEA memories.

the first college girlfriend.

the 16 DPS parking tickets you got...in one year.

the freshman pranks on the punk down the hall.

the meaningful conversations with your roommate at 4 am.

the only bowl game we qualified for. Get it done coach Rhodes!

the first test you failed, and thinking you had failed at life.

the freezing cold walks to class in a blizzard.

the many forgotten assignments.

the life lessons learned.

the friends you made that you will never forget. the friends.

the good friends remain, the ones that just wanted your stuff, they fade.

Now its on to the real world. We're suddenly tossed from classes and homework to customers and contracts. Deadlines have teeth. Families need fed. Dad's fields don't need planted anymore but yours do, and if they don't get planted you loose money, not dad. Most of us are 22 or 23, we've got a whole 60 years left before we get covered with dirt and start pushing up daisies. What will we do with that time between now and then? In 100 years no one is going to remember us unless we invent something as revolutionary as the clock. Your name will just be another that is read off at family reunions.

What will you do with your life? I feel like living for my own name and leaving nothing but a gravestone behind is pointless. All that will represent my accomplishments is a dash between date of birth and date of death. People will only see a dash for every material thing I ever gained. The dash represents all my money and fame. A dash. A one inch dash. Maybe this life is to be lived serving others, living for some thing so much more than ourselves.

Think about it.

Greg's job could get easier...

So we were "researching" the possible technology to take some of the work load off Greg and this is what we came up with. We figure by lightening Greg's load we could get over more acres...see the following video for explanation.

A long, long time ago...

...some guys, maybe someone's great great grandpa and his 14 kids built a fence between two farms. One of those farms is now the 450 Home Farm, and we don't know the name of the other. We farm it but don't know the name, we should probably figure that out. What took great great grandpa and his 14 kids two weeks to build took us a whole two hours to remove. Hope it wasn't your great great grandpa that built the fence. If it was, sorry, we pulled his fence out.

It was really nice that day. Really, really nice. Like 85 and sunny with a 59224 mph wind kind of nice. The wind aside, it was a good day. Just a thought...what does it take to pull a fence? Answer, one tractor, one loader bucket, one gator, an Iowa State University pickup, two class advisors, 12 strapping young men, three girls (to keep the 12 in line), a hayrack, a 4020 pulling the hayrack, and one guy driving the 4020 and supervising the whole deal and making fun of the guys and gals pulling the fence.

After a brief hiatus...

If you have been following our blogs regularly sorry that we went AWOL for awhile. There wasn't much going on during spring break and the week after spring break I got stuck between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Yes. Between the two countries. I'll get back to the 450 farm in a second but you need to know about my adventures...

So I went to Haiti over spring break. Yes, the same Haiti that got rocked by an earthquake. I co-led a group of 46 to Saint Lois du Nord, a city with 30,000 refugees. We worked in an orphanage and helped care for the kids and some dug a drainage ditch with a pick ax and shovels. Anyhow on our way home we left Haiti but the Dominican border closed 15 minutes before we got there. So we slept on a bus between Haiti and the Dominican. No government control here, just guys with machetes and guns. If you wanted to dispose of someone, go there. No one will ever know.

Back to the farm...we got a new tractor and its got fancy GreenStar GPS in it so we can drive straight.

Ethan Crow, professional technology model, demonstrates the GreenStar monitor.

Melting snow+rain=mud

It's raining outside right now...surprise, surprise. Just an FYI here, we got a lot of snow this weekend and when that snow melts it turns into water. There's a lot of snow out there, a whole lot. We're going to have a whole lot of water in about, um, two hours. Shoot. Normally we plant corn and beans in the spring, looks like we might be planting in the fall this year...if it dries out by then. If that happens we'll be harvesting crops in the spring, kind of like some guys are doing this year. Below are some pictures. If at all possible try to avoid these situations. If you get stuck in these situations don't post the pictures online. If you do I'll find them and make fun of you.

One option for fixing the issue of getting stuck would be to invent a tractor with pontoons on it...this guy had a descent idea. To bad it wasn't any good.

This guy wins the "Where the Heck Were You Going" award. My advice to you; don't drive your tractor into a mud hole, you're going to get stuck.

And finally if you must cut beans in the spring avoid places that have standing water unless you have two bulldozers in front pulling, or just put in some tile there champ.

You know you're a farm kid if...

So we had some speakers come to the farm from AgMax today. We all liked them because they gave us pens, chip clips, and leather gloves, and of course a quality presentation about GRP and GRIP insurance policies.

It was like Christmas in here when the gloves were handed out. Everyone unwrapped their brand new gloves and tried them on. Grown men grinned and giggled; only in a class full of farm kids.

You know you're a farm kid if you get more excited about a new pair of leather gloves than a new dress shirt.

Want a chopper?

Remember when we were six years old and we all played with little toy tractors?...some of you may still play with little toy tractors. If this is you and you're not married yet, put the tractors in a box and don't get them out again until you have kids, let them play with them until they're six, then take them away so they don't end up unmarried and playing with tractors at age 32, like you.

Anyway...that said, a couple custom committees ago the determination was made that chopping wasn't making us money so they axed it. Good call. We've still got the chopper. Custom committee decided to sell it. Good call again. If you want to buy it, it can be yours, for a fee of course. Talk to Greg, he can hook you up with a chopper.

Custom committee decided to cut up an old silage wagon and sell it for scrap metal. They figured the wagon was worth more in scrap metal than they would get selling it. The class 100% backed their decision.

Mystery find of the week!

So in light of the recent discovery in the 450 kitchen we've decided to start the weekly mystery pic. So here you go. Found this in the 450 kitchen. Yum.

Get out the classroom!

Fieldtrip. Remember back in elementary when the teacher said fieldtrip and everyone got all excited? The big yellow bus would roll up and everyone would jam into the back of the bus where the teacher couldn't hear what was being said or done.

We'd put the windows down and inhale nineteen pounds of gravel dust as we traveled to the farm to see a goat and three pink piglets and learn that packing peanuts were made from corn and were edible. (I think when I tried eating one of those peanuts I got a styrofoam one, not corn syrup based...it was definitely not edible.)

Anyway, college students get all excited when they get to leave the classroom too, more for the reason that there is a distraction that keeps them awake than entertaining. Earlier this month the Ag Eds 327X class came for a farm tour looking for an understanding of what the 450 farm does on a day to day basis. About 30 students came to see the farm and received a brief tour by the public relations committee and were briefed on the operations and goals of the farm.

Group viewing hog building

The warm shop was welcome by all.

Machinery committee on the job...

Since this is a farm things get used, things get worn out, and equipment gets broken. Enter the machinery committee. For those of you who are not basking in the snow adorning the Iowa ground, we've had some snow recently, a lot of snow actually. Thanks to the evening news the other night I was informed that we have now set the record for number of consecutive days with 4+ inches of snow on the ground, we're at 58 days and counting. (The old record was 55 days in case you were wondering.) Anyway, with all this snow it has to be moved with the tractor and blade. The blade got in a fight with a rock and lost, fixing it is not a problem unless the old metal is "froze up" with rust.

The machinery committee uses a torch to try to heat up the backside of the blade so they can bend it back straight.

The 450 Farm is blogging!

The Iowa State Ag 450 Farm is now online. For those of you that have received our paper newsletter in the past this does not replace the "Farm Link" but is going to act as a supplement to keep you informed and up to date on a more regular basis. We plan to add content to this blog about once every week or so as things change around the farm. What all will be included on the blog? We don't even know yet, it may be education or a humorous story from the farm that week. Check back often to see what we've been up to lately!