Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Harvest 2010

Soybeans have been done for more than a week. Yield was not good (thank heavens for crop insurance). A lot of loss due to white mold. Soybeans are always an "iffy" crop, but you hate to put all your eggs in one basket so to speak and plant all corn although it has been discussed with approximately the same frequency as "what would we do if we won the lottery tonight".

Corn is progressing. The yields are very good, it appears that Farmer Greg's population and strip till tinkering were again successful. The corn is standing well so far and it has dried down a bit, I think somewhere around 24%. They are now alternating between putting wet corn in the bin (you can't put too much at one time or there are problems with the bin) and hauling the wet corn to town. The elevator has been slightly flooded with incoming wet corn (not as bad as last year, yet) and is shutting down earlier than normal (whatever that is). We have possession of a strip till bar and he is trying to strip till when the elevator shuts us off or after dark, so far, not much progress on that front, but he's only had the bar for a day or so. It is raining here, but not really all that much, just about enough to shut down the operation, so we are about in the same boat as those getting tons of rain.

All in all, I'd say aside from the extremely late start to harvest, things are moving along fairly "normally" again, whatever that means. I have not heard yet about modifications/tinkering for the 2010 crop, but Greg has to spend a LOT of time all by his lonesome this time of year doing his thing, I'm sure he'll come up with something. He always does.