Vol. I · No. 1 river.io Price 5¢

CORN 3000

· An Almanack Perpetual · Being a faithful record of one farmer's years upon the Corn Belt ·

A farming life for iPhone

Ninety years.
One farm.

A telegram arrives: your grandfather's quarter-section passes to you — the team, the barn, the herd, and the mortgage with it. Pick your year, 1930 to the present. Pick your state. Farm it for thirty seasons.

☞ Get it on the App Store Paid once. No ads, ever.
The Field screen: the season clock, the note on the farm, and the ground's own numbers.
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How a season plays
Fortnight 3The season plan — every field on one card. Corn or beans, and how hard to push the nitrogen, quoted against what the ground supplies on its own.
Fortnight 5Deep winter. Haul manure while the ground's froze; sweeten sour fields with lime.
Fortnight 9Ground's fit. Pick your seed and roll the planter — or mud it in early and gamble on the spring.
Fortnight 12–15Sidedress the corn if it's hungry. Walk the rounds; the rootworm doesn't announce itself.
Fortnight 21–24Harvest, then the elevator: sell off the combine, or bin it and carry to March. The board at the scale house quotes your odds.
Year's endThe books. A ruled ledger that foots to the bushel — what the weather took, what the rotation paid, what your own hands moved — then the Farmer's Log files the season away.
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What the work is
The real numbers
Every coefficient is cited. USDA yields and prices, NOAA weather, the actual farm bills — the AAA corn-hog contract, the CCC loan floor at 45¢, deficiency payments, ARC and PLC. When the paper promises a price floor, the ledger keeps the promise.
The ground remembers
Field-by-field soil that builds or breaks under your practice. Rotation, manure, cover crops, and lime move the organic matter — and the organic matter moves the yield, for decades. Mine it and the crop starves; keep it in good heart and it carries you.
Kitchen-table decisions
Sign with the insurance agent. Sell off the combine or bin it and carry to March — the board at the scale house quotes your odds. Sow rye after harvest. Every card is a real decision with its numbers on it; anything with one answer answers itself.
The books foot
Year's end brings a ruled ledger that accounts for every bushel: what the weather took, what the rotation paid, what your own hands moved — down to the bushel, with a hand-star ✳ on the lines you chose.
History arrives
The Dust Bowl, the war years, the 1970s boom, the farm crisis at 15% interest, the ethanol run. Survive them in order or start inside one — the era tells you what it costs before you sign.
Yours alone
Entirely on your device. No ads, no accounts, no tracking, no in-app purchases, nothing sold but the app. The privacy policy is one page because there is nothing to disclose.
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Pick your era — it tells you what it costs
1930The hardest row in the book — drought years and dime corn. Sign the AAA contract and hold on.
1939War prices and a fair wind. A forgiving decade to learn the ground.
1950Steady but tight — price supports floor the worst of it.
1973Boom years. Land runs hot, and a trap is being set for the borrowers.
1980The farm crisis. Rates near 15%, land falling — the auctioneer is busy.
2007The ethanol boom — the best grain prices in a generation.
TodayThin margins and big machines. Revenue insurance is the backstop.
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Plates from the almanack
A newspaper event card: Roosevelt signs the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
I — history arrives with the mail.
The Season Plan card: every field, one sitting.
II — every field, one sitting.
The year-end ledger: revenue, costs, and net income in the black.
III — the books foot to the bushel.
The Soil Record: organic matter by field, year by year.
IV — the ground remembers.
The Reckoning: you held the ground.
V — what you made, and what you leave.
The Field screen with the season clock.
VI — thirty seasons, one quarter-section.
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On the provenance of the numbers

Corn 3000 was built the way an extension bulletin is written: nothing ships without a source. Yield response to nitrogen follows Cerrato & Blackmer's linear-response-plateau. Land values follow the USDA-NASS series through the 1920 peak, the Depression trough, and the 1980s crash. The insurance agent quotes real subsidy schedules; the haymaking bill comes off the Iowa custom-rate survey. If we couldn't cite it, we didn't ship it.

Which means the game teaches the real thing: why rotations pay, why the 1979 land buyer met the auctioneer in 1985, and why the paying rate on nitrogen is enough, not the most.

Support & correspondence

Questions, trouble, or corrections to the record: write jeff@river.io and a human will answer. The privacy policy is the shortest page on this site.

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