From the Fields: Beans ‘never looked better’

It continues to look fantastic. We just got through one of the coolest and wettest Julys on record for Illinois, so that’s a good combination for crops. Our weather station had about seven and a quarter inches of rain for July. Boy, does that make double-crop soybeans look good. They have never looked better. They are just fantastic this year. They have a long way to go, but they have a great start and I would say they have never looked better at this time of the year.

I feel like most of our corn is at the milk stage to dent stage. Probably the earliest planted corn is three to four weeks from maturity. The latest planted will need every bit of August and September before that reaches maturity.

We are doing one of the farmer’s favorite tasks. We started mowing our roadside ditches. We usually wait until after Aug. 1 to do that. We are making improvements and modifications to our strip-till bar that we will use this fall, so we are working on that.

I do have a vacation planned for the first week of September and I’ll be heading out to Oregon, so that will be good. I also am going up to Minnesota for my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. We’re getting ready for a rapidly approaching harvest, trying to take a little vacation and getting ready for our field day.