Air December 3, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. The year is rapidly winding down. Thanksgiving is past, Christmas is around the corner and all of a sudden it is starting to look and feel like winter. Which means it is time to start making some progress on these year end chores before the year end becomes the new year.

Fall harvest took longer than normal this year so many of you are probably still settling in from that. Take the time now to start cleaning up the place and getting everything put away out of the way just in case we do have a snowy winter. Right now they are showing climatological conditions for this winter. Which means it may be dry, it may be wet and that wet may be rain or it may be snow and ice. Regardless, it is a good idea to have all equipment put safely away. Get equipment winterized or ready for storage. Where apporpriate, put some mouse and rat poisons out to keep the storage damage they can cause to a minimum. Get winter emergency equipment ready to go and where you can get to it easily. The next three to four months can bring anything, and I don't want to wait until the middle of a big snowstorm to start getting ready. The more prepared you are for any emergency the better shape you are whether you need it or not.

This has been an unusual year. Take some time before the end of the year to sit down with your accountant or tax preparer to get a rough idea of where you are. There's still time to make adjustments with purchases or sales, but you need to start now. Like the saying goes, failure to plan is planning for failure! And nobody wants to fail! Also take some time to look at your cropping plan. With soil temperatures finally cooled off, you have a chance to do some fall fertilizer application. Every indication is that the price of nitrogen is going to be going up. If you have the opportunity, fall application is a good way to defer that higher price of fertilizer next spring. And if you have home raised livestock feed on hand, be it grain, hay or silage, lets be getting that analyzed so you can fine tune rations. Grain, protein and hay prices are all up - so let's keep those feed costs down. Contact me if you need help in obtaining the samples, analysis or interpretation!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2003.

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