We wish all of our readers a very happy New Year.  We started this blog almost three years ago and every month without fail we have ever increasing readership.  From just having a couple of comments and questions per month to probably having at least 10 a week, we have enjoyed every day of interacting with the readers.  We hope the information has been useful and look forward to providing even more in 2012.

We wish everyone a prosperous New Year and we shall see what surprises 2012 brings.

With Thanksgiving coming up in a couple of days, I wanted to take the time to say what I am thankful for:

• My wife of 29 years, Patty Neiffer, for putting up with me for all of these years and for some reason still in love with me.
• My four sons, Garrett – 24, Grant -23, Gannon – 20 and Gage – 18 for thinking their dad is still fairly smart.  Three of my sons plan on being CPAs like their old man and I look forward to discussing taxes with them (most likely on the golf course).
• My CPA career.  I am voracious reader and this career has allowed me to enjoy keeping my mind active and involved.  Many people ask me how can you enjoy doing taxes and I try to tell them it is like putting a puzzle together.  If I can take the pieces of their income tax situation for the year and properly put it together in their favor, we create a nice finished product.
• Our readers on this blog.  We started this blog almost three years ago and I am estimating that well over 100 of our readers have sent me emails with tax and other farm related questions and it has been a pleasure reading and replying to those questions.  Also, many of the readers I have met over this time and I have really enjoyed this part of the blog.  I especially enjoyed getting teased about “driving a combine”.

Again, I want to wish everybody a very Happy Thanksgiving and we are looking forward to the holiday season.

We have a booth at the Tri State Grain Convention in Spokane, through Friday of this week.  We set up the booth yesterday afternoon and had several people stop by.

If any of our readers from Washington, Idaho and Oregon are attending the convention, please stop by and say Hi.

I have been teased by several readers that there appears to be no evidence that I operated a combine on my farm road trip.  Here is a photo of me operating a brand new John Deere Combine on the Hohenberger farmer in Illinois.  Now, there is probably no evidence that I performed all combine operations perfectly, but here is evidence I was “driving” the combine.  It is nice to be back home, but I already miss the combine.

On Thursday, I got to spend the morning with John and Kurt Hohenberger near Leland, Illinois.  I met them this January at TEPAP and looked forward to getting out to see them.  They had just put in a new grain handling system at the home site and we were able to get out in the field and do a little combining.

They have a new John Deere with an 8 row head and John fairly quickly turned the machine over to me and I proceeded to give him some humor by missing a row for about a hundred feet.  It was a little humiliating to have to back up the combine to get it fixed, but for the first time out, I was not too bad.  There were some areas where the corn had blown over in the wind and I had to pick my row and guess on it most of the way.  With John’s help I did not do too bad.

The corn in that field was averaging about 215 a bushels and we saw many areas pushing 250 bushels.  It is always nice to cut high yield grain.

I had lunch with Todd Doehring of Centrec in Champaign, Illinois (actually Savoy which is a suburb).  I had met Todd at the annual Farm Financial Standards Council and it was good to catch up with him.

I then proceeded to drive another 550 miles south to Batesville, Mississippi where I spent the night and I am now headed to Baton Rouge to finally get some sugar cane harvesting in.

I posted yesterday that as usual I brought the rain with me to Kansas City, however, I did get to ride the combine for one trip around the field before the rain came and stopped us.

Bean yields in the area seem to be pretty good compared to normal.  Many fields are  yielding in the high 50s and low 60s.  Corn yields are down from normal probably due to the high heat in August.

Today (Tuesday), I traveled up to Mason City, Iowa to meet up with David Olsen ofIntuitive Agritech Systems, Inc.  David provides management accounting services for farmers in the Midwest and his father, Uncle and cousin farm together about 50 miles northwest of Mason City.

I got to ride on an one year old John Deere 9870 for a couple hours today harvesting 180 bushel corn.  There is something therapeutic about watching 12 rows of corn come into a combine at almost 5 miles an hour and keep a grain cart and two semi trucks going.

I am off to Cedar Falls tonight and am looking forward to actually running the combine for several hours tomorrow before I head to Illinois.

I have had a couple of readers tease me about using the term driving a combine.  They would normally use the term operate or run, but all I know is that I am looking forward to getting in the combine (and I think all four that I will be in are green for those who keep track of these details), putting the rotor and header in gear and getting out in the field and cutting some corn or beans.

I am old enough to remember when the combine I operated in the late 1970s had a cylinder and not a rotor.  Those were always very fun to plug up with wet green morning glory.

I am also looking forward to getting in that sugar cane harvester and cutting some sugar cane.  I will let you know what they call it down in Louisiana when I get there.

To enlighten me, any readers who want to share with me what they call “driving the combine”, if I get enough responses, I will let the readers know.

For this CPA, April 15 is not the wild deadline, it is October 15.  This is the time of year when it can be very difficult to get information from our taxpayers and it is always a wild scramble to the finish line.  I think the latest I have gotten into the office so far this week is 3:30 AM, but it is almost done.

To celebrate, I am headed off on my annual fall farm trip.  This year, I will leave Yakima Sunday morning and fly to Kansas City to stay a couple of days.  I will drive my partner’s combine on Monday.  On Tuesday, I head up to Mason City Iowa to visit with a farm consultant and the goal is to drive combine in the afternoon.  On Wednesday, I will stop by the Pro Farmer office in Cedar Falls, Iowa in the morning and then meet up with another farm consultant/farmer and drive that afternoon.

On Thursday, I start driving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I plan on meeting one of my farm clients and the goal is to drive a sugar cane harvester for the first time.  On Friday, I meet up with my oldest son in New Orleans and two of his friends (I hope I can keep up with them) and on Saturday, we attend the LSU/Auburn game in Baton Rouge.  The original goal was to watch the New Orleans Saints / Indianapolis Colts game on Sunday, but since Peyton Manning is not playing, I think we are going to play golf.

As you can see, for this farm boy, the ultimate vacation is to drive three combines and a sugar cane harvester.  I will keep you updated on the trip since I will have my IPad with me and can post anytime I want.

As most everybody knows, I spent most of last week on the Midwest Crop Tour.  The weather this year was much better than last year when we got rained on for one full day of the tour.  I do not remember even getting one sprinkle this year.  My thoughts are as follows:

• Last year, I remember having multiple stops where the corn yield was over 200 bushels.  Also, I remember that at least 70% or more of the corn yields were 170 or higher.  This year, each day, we would only have one or two fields over 200 and perhaps 3 other fields in the 170 range.  All of the other fields were less than 150 each day.  However, last year, our lowest yields were substantially lower than this year.  We never had a yield under 100 bushels this year and last year, I remember having several under 100, primarily in South Dakota and North Central Nebraska.  This year, we did not cover any of that area.
• The soybeans on average looked very good this year, however, the heat and lack of rain may be getting to them.  If the beans get a couple of inches of rain in the next couple of weeks, they should yield fairly well.
• At all four of the evening stops, the farmers in attendance were not a bullish about their yields as last year.  At the same time last year, all of the crops looked very good, however, the finish to the crop was poor.  This year, most farmers expect a poor finish, but hope for better.
• There were more people on this year’s tour and more of them were not farmers.  It appears that the tour is one of the best guides for industry groups such as traders, hedge funds, farm media groups, etc. to get a good handle on where the crop is headed.
• Pro Farmer does an excellent job of putting on the tour.  From Chip and Brian leading each leg to the other staff involved in making each day and night run smoothly, I just want to reinforce how good of a job they do.

All in all, this year’s Midwest crop tour shows a lower crop than last year or the three year trend and I look forward to next year to see how it turns out.

Since I had a meeting in Austin, Minnesota today at 3 pm, I had to miss taking corn and bean counts for the day.  After taking counts yesterday for almost 12 hours straight, I actually did not mind the rest.

Also, during yesterday’s route, I ended up cutting two of my fingers with a corn stalk leaf and to use a farm term, bled like a “stuck hog”.  The other scout in the corn field did not do well with the sight of human blood, so I was running out of the field dripping blood all the way.  We got it cleaned and bandaged and since I seem to get a tetanus shoot every five years or so (I have way too many scars on my body to keep track of), I am fairly sure I will be fine.

Tonight, we had the recap of the corp tour with the meet up of the western and eastern legs of the crop tour in Austin, Minnesota.  A crowd of easily 400 farmers and more than 500 people total found out that the estimated corn crop for both Minnesota and Iowa will be down from last year.  Remember that this is the estimated biological crop.  The actual harvested crop per acre will be down probably even more due to all of the wind, hail, and maturity issues involved with this year’s crop.

The chance of this year’s crop being higher than the August 1 USDA estimate, in my opinion, is somewhere between slim and none.  We shall see.

Tomorrow is a travel day home and I will be posting again next week.