23 Oct Christy: Final Week

Hartley, Iowa — Corn is moving right along, and I think we’ll be seeing the end to this harvest season possibly by the weekend. By Hartley, corn has averaged around 175 to 230 bushels per acre. It’s probably about 50 to 60 bushels less than average. As I’ve been talking about before, a lot of the lower averages are due to too much moisture over the summer and no rain here at the end.

Paul’s crew took a few days off from working in Hartley because they had run into wet corn, but they returned last Monday  He is using folding Case IH corn headers that have made moving fields quite a bit easier. Before he would have to take his head off to move fields because it could be difficult getting through some of the bridges.

This last week we had a severely windy day that halted operations. I brought lunch out to Paul at noon, and when he grabbed his lunch, he said he thought the wind was probably a little too dangerous to be combining in. After talking with the farmer, they decided to quit for the day. Wind gusts were in excess of 50 miles an hour. Later that day, a fire broke out east of Lake Park, Iowa. Thankfully, first reponders were able to get it out even in the high winds before any homes could be damaged.

After talking with Gary a couple of nights ago, Paul said corn was averaging around 190 bushels per acre. He also picked up some work to tack on at the end, but hopefully he should be wrapping most acres by the end of this weekend. It’s always hard to say for sure when things will officially wrap up, but I don’t think we’ll be picking up much more this year. Fields are clearing out quickly now.

Out in Roscoe, Patrick is looking at finishing up corn in the next few days, so he, too, should be done by the weekend and moving back this way. It’ll be great to finally get all the crew back together for the end of the season.

The work won’t be done just because the acres are completed. We’ll have a lot of equipment to tidy up before it can be put away. Trucks always need work and will continue to be worked on throughout the winter months. It’ll be time to say goodbye to most of the crew and get them all home. It’s nice that they’ll all be home in plenty of time for Thanksgiving. It’s hard to believe that’s right around the corner.

With the final acres on the horizon, I’m really grateful for such a good year. I only wish our farmers could’ve seen a little better yields, but there’s always next year.