Harvest is over...!

It has been a while since I last posted on our blog, but I am happy to report that as of this morning we completed our 2011 harvest season. We ended our harvest with some of the best yielding corn we experienced all year. The past few weeks held challenges of their own with a few breakdowns. The worst of all the repairs was a blown transmission in our John Deere 9870 combine. Fortunately for us, Chris Dowson was there to step in and help by lending us a combine while the repairs were being made - thanks to Chris! We also had the opportunity to demo the new John Deere S680 combine these last two days of harvest. These are the new models which were rolled out recently at the Farm Progress Show in late August. It was fun to watch everyone take a ride in it and see how it compared to our combine.

A few neighbors have started applying anhydrous ammonia and our plan is to start next week. We have a few fields remaining to be chiseled and the Younkers Brothers will address those this week. We plan to clean up fall machinery and get the anhydrous toolbars ready the remainder of this week.

Trying out the new John Deere combine

Owen driving the combine

Owen impatiently waiting on the grain cart to arrive

The Younkers Brothers changing out a broken belt

Week ending October 8th...

Harvest continues to roll on. Last Tuesday, October 4th we began our 2011 soybean harvest and just one week later we pulled out of the last field and hooked back up to the corn head. Soybean yields were surprisingly good for the little precipitation we received in August. We are in the down hill stretch of our harvest as the grain bins are now full and everything remaining will be delivered to elevators. Once again, the tillage crew is caught up and we are waiting to spread lime on a few remaining fields. Go Cardinals!

Harvesting soybeans on the Grand Prairie farm

The last beans on the Lehmann Farm

Owen riding in the semi- he was more interested in the gum he found...

Ed Clemens running the Quadtrac and chisel plow

Week ending October 1st...

Harvest continues to fly by. This past week we continued to focus on harvesting corn hoping that another week would let all our beans mature and be ready for harvest this week. We also harvested our plot. The highest yield was 250.4 bushels per acre with the plot average of 227.6 bpa. These yield results shocked us quite frankly. We have been harvesting good corn all season long, but our field results do not mirror our plot results. And the plot was treated exactly the same way as our usual corn following soybeans. Albeit where the plot was planted the drainage is better than average. Later in the week we moved up to our Williamsville farm because we discovered two hybrids that were falling down from recent high winds and stalk rots. Even though the corn is mangled, it is still some of the highest yielding corn we have been in so far. Our plan is to move back to the Ashland area soon and begin combining soybeans. We generally try to harvest all our beans in one week and then switch back to corn for the final push towards the finish line. Have a great week!

Special thanks to Brendan Bachman and Nathan Peak from Lincoln Land FS for helping us weigh our plot

Harvesting the 4 row entries in our plot


Opening up the Williamsville farm

Owen and Max playing in a tractor wheel