A January in Southern Illinois

We at Cahokia Rice invite you to join us as the coming year of rice production on our farm unfolds. We hope you'll find what goes into raising a crop of Non-GMO, high quality, and naturally high protein rice interesting and it will give you a better understanding of how our special brown and white rice gets to your table.

Is there anything to tell in January? If you get out of your warm car on a day like today and walked across our fields you might not think much was going on. We notice the sounds. If you walk toward the river (our farm is walking distance to the mighty Mississippi) the sound is unique and unusual. It isn't the rushing of the water, but of pieces of floating ice crashing into each other. You can see it (and hear) on our Instagram page. This will not last long so we marvel at this phenomena of nature while we can.

Walking across the field your feet may crunch on the frozen ground. That tells us something about our the seedbed we will prepare in the spring. Last year we planted soybeans on this field as a way to condition the soil. Soybeans have an intense root system that can naturally break up the soil better than tillage equipment. Add that to some gentle freezing and thawing action nature is giving us now and we will be able to give the high protein seed we raised last year a wonderful start. The way things look now we may not need tillage equipment at all. The tractor we use floats on top of the soil causing minimum compaction to the soil. The seed planter can drill our seed into the soil directly with no additional tillage necessary.

Farmers tend to optimistic by nature, but January is a time of to be optimistic anyway because anything can happen. The river may rise. It may get hot or too cool at the wrong time. Prices may plunge. On a farm anything can happen, but today it all looks great.