Knee High by the 4th of July

The 4th of July is a great time to celebrate our country's independence, show off your patriotism, spend time with family and friends, shoot off fireworks and check crops.  It's been tradition for decades that farmers check their crops, especially corn, to see if it is "Knee High by the 4th of July."  Now while knee high isn't the benchmark for farmers anymore due to hybridization and improved genetics, it is still a fun tradition for our family to benchmark our corn (and family's) growth every year (see 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012).

This year's growing season has been quite the struggle.  We had a very wet spring and fought to get our crops in between rains.  Most of our corn and soybean plantings were delayed because it was too wet to get in our fields.  We even had to prevent plant one of our fields, which means we failed to get a field planted before the end of our planting period due to its wet conditions.  Thankfully this corn is knee high but many fields are shorter than this.  We would like to see our corn head high by this time of year, like last year.  Our 2018 corn was even tasseling by the 4th of July last year!

When looking through our last 8 years of knee high photos, this is one of our most delayed corn crops.  But it has finally started feeling like summer the last couple of weeks, and we pray that the heat, sun and scattered rain showers help our corn and soybeans grow.

The kids thought we should all hold a stalk of corn for a photo 😉

We hope you all have had a great Independence Day!  What are some of your favorite family traditions for the 4th of July?