Bloomsbury Farm and Scream Acres are closed for the season and we’ve begun taking down the various paraphernalia that goes with running an entertainment business. While we are closed to public, Karen and her assistants are still busy making fudge and taking gift basket orders for the holidays. And between now and opening day next year (sometime in late August or early September) we will be reviewing everything, attending conventions and planning next year’s mazes and family-oriented events. The fun never ends!

Just because the entertainment piece of our family business is winding down doesn’t mean my work is done. Now it’s time to focus on farming–the soybeans are done but we have quite a bit of corn yet to be harvested. After that rainy October, the warmer weather we had this November helped bring corn moisture down so it won’t have to do so much drying in our bins. We’ve begun chisel-plowing the fields to prepare them for next year (this involves using a piece of equipment, pulled behind the tractor, that digs up the soil and mixes the cornstalks in with the topsoil so they can decompose). We only chisel-plow fields that have been planted with corn that year, and we rotate the crops in our fields from year to year. If corn is planted in a field this year, then soybeans will be planted in that field next year, and vice versa.

Once harvest is over, I will spend the winter catching up on bookwork and planning for next year’s crop. This will include researching, choosing, and purchasing the different seed varieties I will plant, the various fertilizers I will use, and the herbicides I will need. I will also be busy entering into, and fulfilling contracts for corn and soybeans that I have already harvested, and even those that I have yet to plant in the upcoming year! Isn’t it amazing how times have changed and farmers can now sell their crop before they’ve even planted it? Well I sure think so, and that is actually how I sell more than half of my crops–by forward contracts.

Looking forward to 2010 . . .

From my family to yours, Happy Holidays.