Farm: John grows corn and soybeans and raises 10,000 hogs on his farm south of Keota. He and his wife of 41 years, Deanna, have two daughters and one son.

John Heisdorffer:
We finished planting corn on Saturday evening, and we’ve been mostly selling hogs these past few rainy days. My goals for this week are to get the planter changed over and ready for beans, as the forecast says it should be mostly dry this weekend.
As far as challenges, the soil is so dry that we could hardly see the marker when planting. We have auto-steer on the tractor, but I still use the marker. I’m an old-timer; they’ll convert me some day. The ground has been working nicely, and we haven’t had a hard rain to pack it down.
It’s also been windy, which made loading the planter difficult. The wind never quits; it blows every day. My first corn, which was planted April 23rd or 24th, is up in rows and looking good. My sweet corn, which I always plant first, is also up. Although the ground has gotten hard, we’ve got a good stand with all our corn.
It’s been a good week because we got a lot done. Actually, the week was sort of awesome – even though we did go through a five-hour ordeal to fix the wire harness when our planter and tractor systems weren’t communicating. I think the best management decision I made was to really push planting because we got all the corn in before it started raining.
We’re busy trying to feed our customers, and we’re being sustainable through no-till and minimum tillage practices.