We are getting close to the last 15% of our harvest. We have 100 acres of corn remaining around home and then everything locally and South will be harvested. Our next move will be to the North Farms where we have one soybean field and one corn field; but they are really large fields. Corn yields have been pleasantly surprising, while soybean yields have been good but disappointing compared to the yields we first heard during the first three weeks of harvest. Our tillage is caught up as well as the fertilizer and lime applications. It really has been an exceptionally great fall regarding the weather. We couldn't have ordered better conditions. Unfortunately we've had a few breakdowns which have slowed our progress, but it does give everyone a little time off to spend with family and catch up on office work. Currently we are down for a couple days due to the vertical auger in the combine stripping the splines out causing the combine to not be able to unload at all. That is a two day minimum repair job 'at the dealer' so we are catching up on various other jobs.
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| Harvesting soybeans on our University of Illinois Farm outside New Berlin. Bean harvest is almost completed with a mere 160 acre field remaining. |
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| Dumping in the old elevator at Prentice Farmers Elevator. Barely wide enough to get a semi through it. |
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| Blocking traffic so we didn't have to take the 40' soybean head off the combine. We were only moving a mile and traffic was light so it worked well. |
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| Some of the corn we harvested on our Greenfield farms was delivered to Cargill at Florence which is situated right along the Illinois River. Our corn was dry enough to be dumped into the elevator and put directly on a barge which will eventually make its way down the Mississippi to the Port of New Orleans. |
