From the Fields: Wrapping up harvest

I have about six more days of harvest left, so I think we can still make it by Thanksgiving. Most of the snow is melted off the corn, so once it gets cold we should be able to go. We have about 500 acres of corn to do, so we’re almost done. We’re hoping to get back to combining on Nov. 17. It’s supposed to get cold and sunny, so we should have a good run then.

The mid-May planted corn yielded really good. The late-May and early-June corn had good yields, but it didn’t fully mature, so the test weight is lacking, which kept it from being really good. The later corn is wetter at 22% to 23% moisture compared to the early corn, which was 17% moisture.

Corn is all standing. It stood through the extreme wind event earlier this month. We haven’t found any corn down yet.

The grain elevators are starting to fill up, so they are building piles to make room. This break with the snow was actually good so they can reposition some grain. Most everybody in this area are wrapping up with harvest.

One neat feature I found on my combine tells me how many miles I’ve driven. I’m approaching 1,100 miles and that’s head down miles. It doesn’t include road miles or turning on the ends. It should be about 1,300 miles when I finish, so that’s a lot of back and forth.

For parts, we’ve become accustomed to having to drive 20 miles to the next dealer or wait until the next day. It may have been a problem five years ago, but it’s the normal now. Part of that is because there are so many different machines and models in use, which makes it difficult for the dealers to stock everything. So, that makes inventory management of parts unbelievable.

My next event as chairman of the Illinois Soybean Association is our board meeting on Nov. 28-29.