Harvest on hold...

Harvest on our farm began on Saturday, September 6th.  Unfortunately, the harvest activity was short-lived as the rains set in early Tuesday morning and did not stop until Wednesday evening.  Over the course of those 36 hours we received six inches of rainfall. As you might imagine, this was not welcomed since harvest had started. 

Prior to the rains we were able to take out a 120 acre field and were very pleased with the yields.  When we began the corn moisture was around 25%.  Two days later the moisture's had dropped almost four points to 21%.  That quick dry down is good for corn and it also means we hopefully can use less propane to dry it down to 15%.  The rain delay will set us back more than we would like because the corn has a variety of stalks diseases and with each and every rain and wind event more stalks collapse.  So the race is on once it dries up to allow for more field activity.  In the coming weeks many of our soybean acres will also be ready.  

Be safe out there and please use patience and caution when passing or meeting farm equipment this fall!

Harvest has begun!

6" of rain in 30 hours provides for a lot of excess water

Aerial view of our scale project

Setting the last section of the scale with the crane

Ed from Southern IL Scale driving the weight cart to calibrate the scale

Ron Brown welding on the auger cart