26 Sep Christy: Fall is here, before wheat harvest is done

Round Lake, Minnesota and Elkton, South Dakota—Paul brought one machine home last weekend to combine early beans, and we rounded out this weekend making a trip back up to Elkton, South Dakota, to start picking corn. All our crew aside from Paul and I are still working on durum by Ray, North Dakota.
By Round Lake, Minnesota, it’s been a great start to fall harvest. Beans are combining well at around 11.2% moisture. I feel like these beans must be about the only beans in this area that are ready at this time, but it won’t be long before everyone is in the field.

Beans have been cutting well. These are earlier than most everything else in this area.

After finishing early beans around home, I pulled our extra crew camper from home up to Elkton, South Dakota, on Friday while Zoey was at school. I came back home to pick up Zoey from school, and then pulled our camper up to Elkton. We stayed the weekend while Paul began picking corn and came back tonight so Zoey can return to school Monday. We had a friend come up to help run grain cart, hence the need for extra accommodations. We’re lucky this year that our two farmers who have crops ready now do all the trucking, and our crew could concentrate on finishing durum in North Dakota.

Getting close to finishing the first field of corn. Everything seems to be working pretty well. 

Paul only began two fields of corn by Elkton and they were averaging about 21% moisture. This corn will go to bins and be dried.

Conventional corn by Elkton, South Dakota, is running around 21% moisture. In this spot the corn was standing well, in others it was down. 

Patrick is on his way to Elkton, as I write this from Ray, with machines that will take over for Paul so that he can move back to Round Lake and continue working on beans that should be getting close this week. That’ll mean that I’ll need to run back up to Elkton after dropping Zoey off at school tomorrow to retrieve our camper for what I hope is the last time this season.
It’s been an incredible amount of running back and forth, but we should be able to find a good groove here this week. It’ll definitely help having more machines to start covering the acres that are about to be ready.
Paul should also have some beans of his own ready quickly. He decided to do something a little different this year, and he desiccated one bean field by home. Using a chemical called Gramoxone, he killed them off so he has a better idea of the window of time they’ll need to be combined. It’ll be interesting to see how this method works. Before being sprayed, Zoey and I went out and grabbed a few plants to count pods. We counted 59 pods on one plant, so as the old farmer’s tale goes, hopefully the beans will average somewhere around that number.

Zoey grabbing a few bean plants to count pods before they are sprayed.

A comparison of fields where Paul sprayed Gramoxone. This is one day after being sprayed, and it’s not very easy to see by the road, but you can already tell the bean plants on the left are drying compared to the field on the right that was not sprayed. 

We’re just scratching the surface on fall harvest, but bean harvest will be in full bloom here this next week. I’ll have more to come on yields and a better look at crops next week. Hope everyone has a great and safe start to harvest.

Christy Paplow can be reached at christy@allaboardharvest.com.

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