Fall is here. It was a chilly first day of autumn, but the cooler temperatures were short-lived. One day with a sweatshirt and right back to short-sleeve T-shirts again. Today was back in the 80s, sunny and breezy. It was a great day to combine corn. We finished chopping corn silage Friday. Saturday we took advantage of the beautiful weather, washed up the chopper boxes and put them away for the year. The tractors were hooked up to grain wagons and we started on corn harvest. We have a new combine this year. We need to finish getting it calibrated and learning how all the features work, but it has been fun start to harvest.
Yields varied across the field I have been in. I would say it’s yielding better than I expected considering the lack of moisture, close to average. The field has some good flat ground, as well as sandy knolls. The yield on the knolls dropped off as expected with the drier growing season. The stalk quality suffered over those areas, as well. Quite the contrast in the same field to corn near waterways and areas where we fight springs or wet spots on years with much more rainfall.
The crop adjuster was here this week to appraise the yield of the corn we took for silage. This was one of our river bottoms fields and the appraisal came in around 240 bushels per acre, which is about average. I don’t expect to see any record-breaking yields this year, but it is nice to see that the technology and breeding in our corn varieties has improved greatly on how the plant utilizes moisture, especially in drought years.
I’m seeing a lot of cover crops and wheat being put in now that silage is off and a lot of people have got a jump on getting soybeans combined. We really need a good rain to help those crops germinate and get established this fall. We did receive about 0.2″ of rain this week. It cut the dust for a little bit, but we sure could use more. Be safe out there on the roads and in the field as harvest rolls on.