09 Oct Christy: Corn picking has begun

Round Lake, Minnesota — Soybean harvest is getting close to completion, and Paul has now moved two machines over to corn. He’s running two carts and between four and five trucks to keep up. This farmer provides trucks and drivers for us, so sometimes the amount of trucks varies. The corn has been running about 14.5 percent moisture. So far, it’s going pretty well.

All other crews are working on soybeans. By Hartley, beans are averaging the same as we’ve seen everywhere else, at about 50 to 60 bushels per acre. It’s not as great a crop as we saw last year, but it’s still a good crop. There will be some clean-up work to be done cleaning up replants. It takes a little more time, but at least the farmer gets a little more yield for their fields.

Out in Roscoe, South Dakota, Patrick’s crew has started on beans. Their weather has been good so far, though they are a little cooler than we are down here. I imagine they are wishing for some home-cooked meals, but it sounds like things have been going well out there.

I was originally thinking this harvest season might run really late, but I am surprised at how quickly crops have become ready and how well the weather has held out. We’ve stayed warm and very dry, which hurried crops along. We’re actually a little too dry right now and could use some rain. Unfortunately, rain isn’t in our future. We do have another 80-degree day this weekend, and then we’ll start to see temperatures drop into the 60s and 70s, unless it changes again.

At the rate we’re going right now, we should have beans finished up pretty quickly. Then, everyone will be picking corn. Once more crews move over to corn, we’ll be parking some combines and moving those operators into either carts or trucks. Corn is so fast-paced that we would have nowhere near the carts and trucks to keep up if we ran all our machines. I think our operators will be happy to have a change in job and experience a different occupation for the remainder of the season.

I can tell we have gotten much busier this last week, and with good weather and machines running well, there isn’t a stop or break in sight for a while. It’ll be good to accomplish a lot in a short time, but hopefully we don’t get too worn out before the end.