From the Fields: Harvest nearly complete

CHEBANSE, Ill. — With rain in the forecast, the Smolkovich brothers hoped to wrap most of the corn harvest on Oct. 24 after a slight delay for equipment repair.

John, Joe, Alan and Marko had 20 acres of corn remaining that’s designated for picking on the farmstead where they raise cattle.

The ear corn is stored in the adjacent crib and is later ground and fed along with hay to their 22-head of Angus. The cattle will go to market in early January.

Harvest season went relatively smooth on their 700 acres of corn and soybeans in Ford and Iroquois counties in northeast Illinois.

“We started harvesting soybeans around Oct. 1. We finished soybean harvest Oct. 9. We finished harvest corn a couple of days ago except for the 20 acres of corn left to pick,” Alan said.

“The crops looks pretty good, surprisingly, after the dry weather we had. We’re averaging mid-50s in soybeans and 180, 190 in corn. That’s good for our area.”

The family uses a 1978 New Idea 708 harvester with a John Deere 443 corn head to pick about 30 acres of corn. They use a John Deere 9570 combine for the remainder of their corn and soybeans acres.

A bad bearing forced a bit of a delay before they could resume picking on Oct. 24.

“A bearing went out on the throat. We had to pull the throat off and put a new bearing in it. We put it back together last night and got it going again,” Alan said.

During their final get-together with AgriNews this season, Joe and Alan were unloading ear corn from a wagon into the crib.