I have been traveling in the Midwest this week. The first two days I spent in Osage Beach, Missouri for some tax continuing education.  The temperature topped out near 90 degrees yesterday and as I traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa it remained near 75 to 85 degrees the whole way.

After arriving in Cedar Rapids, I elected to drive up to Waterloo and see if anyone was out working the fields. As I left the hotel the temperature read 82 degrees. As I went north it started to drop almost one degree a mile and by the time I reached Waterloo it bottomed out at 46 degrees.

The weather forecast calls for much lower temperatures over the next few days and maybe even snow. I think the delayed planting season will fall further behind.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped off at a convenience store and as I pulled into the parking lot I noticed a pop vending machine out front. However instead of pop, this sold “live bait”. I must admit this is the first time I have ever seen this.

This post does not contain income tax law updates but sometimes weather and “live bait” can be just as interesting.

Just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas over the next couple of days. We are still hanging on the fiscal cliff and most likely nothing major will be accomplished before year-end.

We will keep you posted, but for now Merry Christmas!

Paul Neiffer CPA

I head out for the second annual Executive Women in Agriculture conference sponsored by Top Producer magazine.  I spoke at the conference last year and women tend to ask more and many times better questions than men.  I look forward to speaking at this year’s event and I already have spoken to some of the women that will be there.  I think there were about 150 women at last year’s event and many more are expected this year.

If you are attending, please come up and say hi.

Paul Neiffer, CPA

I am traveling tomorrow from Ames, Iowa to home (Yakima, Washington).  I most likely will not get home until about 10 pm (assuming no delays in flights and my drive home).  Some of my fondest childhood memories were of Thanksgiving.  My mother was the oldest of 12 children (cheap farm labor) and for several years we had Thanksgiving at my grandparents’s house.  During a couple of these dinners, we had at least 30 relatives there and it was always fun to see how much we could get by with since all of the parents were visiting and not totally paying attention to us.

I hope that our readers have been able to create these childhood memories for their children and grandchildren and we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Paul Neiffer

My wife and I are down in San Jose del Cabo on vacation this week and yesterday we drove from San Jose to Todas Santos on the Pacific Ocean up to La Paz and then back to San Jose on Highway 1. The key thing that I noticed in the drive was the amount of land being farmed or perhaps I should say the lack of land being farmed.

In many areas we would see a small acreage in vegetables, but there appeared to be an abundant amount of land available to be tilled and farmed. It could be due to a lack of water but I know in my area all of this land would be farmed if there was enough water.  I just wonder how much more land is available around the world in areas like this such as Africa.

We will need to find out in the next 30 years since there will be another 2 billion plus mouths to feed.

For those interested so far my wife has put up with me and has no plans on shipping me home early.

We have had great late summer/early fall weather here in the Northwest.  Cool mornings with highs in the low to mid 80s for the last couple of weeks.  On Tuesday, I visited one my clients that was harvesting corn just north of Pasco, Washington.  They had just finished up a 50 acre field that had done about 290 bushels per acre and were harvesting a field that according to the combine monitor was in the 265 acre range.

This corn had about 23% moisture and is hauled to a local feedlot that then stores it for winter feeding.  I rode with my client to the feedlot about 25 miles away.  I took several pictures which I will upload once I find a cord that will allow me to plug the camera into the computer.  Those cords are always to easy to lose.

It is great to watch 265 bushel corn being harvested.  You spend almost as much time dumping the grain out of the bin than not.  Using a fairly new John Deere 9870 kept two grain carts and four semi trucks busy all day and that is with only a 8 row corn head.  They have ordered a new 12 row corn head but I think John Deere’s moto of “Just In Time” production stands for just in time for the end of harvest.

 Paul Neiffer, CPA

I was reading an article in Accounting Today (yes, there are magazines about the accounting profession) about how publicly traded companies are rounding up their earnings more than normally expected.  For example, the authors reviewed the earnings announcements for over 330,000 positive earnings announcements from 1995-2009.

With that big  of a sample size, you would  expect rounding up and down to be almost exactly 50/50.  However, they found (surprise/surprise) that about 53% were rounded up and only 47% were rounded down.   When earnings per share were 20 cents or less, they found 59% rounded up.

They were able to identify approximately 320 companies who had a history of  consistently rounding  up and one company had rounded up every quarter for 42 straight quarters.

We, as accountants, normally have a materially level that can be either very small or larger based on the situation, but these  examples of companies rounding up were abusing the trust of their readers and investors.  They were trying to make their earnings look better than they really were.  Any reader of the financial statement could calculate the actual number, however, the company knew that the  general public normally does not do this.

The bottom line is that a penny can matter in many situations.

 Paul Neiffer, CPA

For all of those farmers out there that are harvesting their crops, have a good Labor Day Weekend and as a farm kid, I thank you for all of your effort to feed this country and the world.  Some of my favorite memories is working with my father on the farm (even as young as 3 I can remember sleeping on the floor of the combine while my dad operated it).

All of your efforts are appreciated and even with the drought, you will keep the good work going.

Again, thank you.

I am headed over to Roche Harbor for my oldest son’s best friend from college wedding and expect to be stuck in line waiting for a ferry for three hours this afternoon.

I will have a new post on Tuesday and have a good Labor Day Weekend.

Paul Neiffer, CPA

Just some short clips of wheat harvest near Dixie, Washington (about 12 miles east of Walla Walla, Washington) on Saturday, August 11, 2012.

• Short clip of harvesting wheat
• Short clip of grain cart coming up the hill with Dixie/Walla Walla in the background
• Longer clip of dumping wheat in the grain cart

All of these videos were taken by my wife (in her flip flops, she did not know I was going to have her do this, she thought she was just picking me up to go home, but I got her to ride the combine for a couple of hours).

I spent Friday afternoon and all day Saturday cutting wheat for my cousins down in Walla Walla.  I started out on Friday driving their older Case IH 2388 and then they kindly allowed me to drive a new Case IH 8230 with about 100 hours on it that they were renting.  This is a nice machine to cut wheat with. 

On the  2388, the top speed in 100+ bushel wheat was about 2.5 miles per hour with a 30′ header.  With the new machine, you could get close to 4 miles an hour with a 40′ Draper header.  The biggest issue with the header was its weight.  It created a delay in dropping and lowering the header that was much more noticeable than the 2388.

I am attaching a few photos from the two days and I think I probably harvested about 100-120 acres in total.  It is very hard with photos to let you know who steep this ground is to harvest.  Each of these combines are equipped with Hillco side hill levels to keep the cutting platform level on up to 25 degree slopes.  The photo at the bottom was probably close to a 20 degree slope and the one on the right was slightly less than that.  If you look at the header you can see that it is sloped downhill from the combine platform.  The auger is out ready to dump into the grain cart.

On my second days I was cutting a sidehill several times where the Hillco was unable to keep the platform totally level, but with the four large front tires and rear wheel assist, you are always feel fairly safe.

Remember, for this farm boy, cutting wheat for a day or two is the ultimate vacation.