Miller finishes out the year with a smooth harvest and gratitude

MONTICELLO, Ill. — As the cropping year winds down in his part of Illinois, Eric Miller looked back on his two decades of farming in the central part of the state with gratitude.

“This is crop year 20 in Illinois. I continue to be appreciative and blessed that I ended up in central Illinois every crop year. Whether yields are down, yields are up, the weather is your friend, the weather is working against you,” he said.

“I remind people who have been here for generations that there is really no place in the world like Illinois for growing crops.”

Miller finished up harvesting full-season soybeans, and with his wheat planted, he turned his attention to corn harvest.

“We started corn harvest Oct. 17. What was bad for soybeans, all those sunny, windy, warm days, was good for the corn. All the corn moistures have really come down,” he said.

“I think all the moistures are probably below 20% so minimal drying charges on the corn side.”

While the sunny, windy, warm and excessively dry conditions have presented some challenges, Miller said the weather conditions, as well as the forecasts of more of the same, helped make the harvest a relaxed one.

“This has probably been the most enjoyable, pleasant, easy harvest that I can remember in my 30 years of doing it. I would describe the pace in the countryside as steady and never hectic,” he said.

“There’s just no need to push it too hard because every time you look at the forecast, it’s 10 days of warm temperatures and dry, sunny conditions.”

Harvest also comes with a side of excitement, as Miller gets to see the results of the various research plots he hosts and tends throughout the growing year.

“This is the fun time of the year for the research plots because we get to harvest them and see the results. That is the conclusion, that is what really matters. You get to see what was working and what wasn’t,” he said.

At the same time, Miller also is making preparations and plans for next year’s plots.

“We also are starting to perform work for plots for next year. We’ve got a couple of wheat plots going on and we are putting some fertilizer on those,” he said.

“We are laying out plots for next year, making sure we have the locations correct. We try to rotate the plots so we don’t have a plot where one was the previous year.

“You want to start with a clean slate when you are doing a plot. It really is a year-round process, certainly a lot of planning and logistics to make the plots successful.”

When all the fieldwork is finished for the year, Miller will head north to spend some time with family.

“Most of the family is in Minnesota so I’m always up in Minnesota in the last week of December,” he said.

“You never know what you are going to get for weather the last week of December in Minnesota. Last year was above freezing for several days with rain and we’ve also had it as cold as 30 below.”