From the Fields: ‘Thankful and blessed’

BREMEN, Ind. — Harvest may be finished on Clay Geyer’s farm in northern Indiana, but his work is far from over.

With corn and soybeans in storage to market later, hay that needs delivered to customers and several other projects — there is plenty to keep him busy.

Geyer shared a final update as a 2024 AgriNews From the Fields contributor.

Q: Have you finished harvest for the year?

A: Yes, harvest was completed on Oct. 20, and in all my years of farming, I cannot recall a fall harvest where crops dried down at a record pace.

Every day was just an amazing day, waking up to seasonably warm temperatures, wind and sunny skies. And every day was a carbon copy of the day before with no chance of rain in sight.

Q: How are the yields overall?

A: There were a few acres slightly higher, but overall the average soybean yields were 59 bushels to the acre. And corn was down slightly from last year at an average of 194 bushels to the acre.

But, honestly, I have to say we should be thankful and blessed to have a harvestable crop, despite the challenges all of the crops faced out the gate. Thankfully, the hurricanes didn’t devastate our crops like other states dealt with to the south.

Q: Do you have any memorable moments from harvest?

A: I’m sure we all have had memorable moments over the years from harvest experiences, some good and some bad. This is one of those sermons where I can share the good, the bad and the ugly.

After 20 years of relying on others to harvest our crops, we finally upgraded to a John Deere 9500 combine, which I admit was hands-down a plus and a step in the right direction.

It was quite an upgrade after graduating from the use of a Massey Ferguson 540 combine, a New Idea picker-sheller and the Allis-Chalmers 90 pull-type combine.

This year, we decided to multitask and start our soybean harvest the day before the Indiana Corn Husking Competition.

I should’ve been in Nappanee that afternoon, but I agreed to help my brother get the combine and the header cart moved to the first field, so he could begin the soybean harvest of 2024 — so, he could be harvesting and filling semis while I was placing the finishing touches to the corn-husking contest site.

Our experience in our unfortunate oops will forever be embedded in our memory. And Rule No. 1 should always state: It is important to position the header cart on a level surface to aid in the simple attaching and detaching of the header from or to the combine.

Consequently, the header wasn’t sitting on the feeder house correctly, so it was lowered to the cart and later discovered after making 180-degree turn to the right that the sickle of the grain table had slid down from its resting position on the support tube and into an awkward position on the head cart.

Thankfully, we had a Hiniker 3-point head carrier in our arsenal of rarely used tools, and this was just the ticket needed to safely remove the header from the cart.

Luckily, we had a tractor equipped with a strong enough and heavy enough 3-point system to lift the 25-foot grain table from the cart.

Looking back to that very day, if we had just left the combine in the shed a couple more days and not tried to rush harvest ahead of the contest, then perhaps nothing bad ever would have surfaced ahead of the already-busy weekend of the Indiana State Corn Husking Competition.

Q: If you could pick one or two words to describe harvest 2024, what would you pick?

A: I have a few: dirty and dusty; crispy crops; flammable foliage.

Q: Looking back on the year, how would you describe your farming journey? Have there been challenges or opportunities that stood out?

A: Challenging field conditions to kick start the planting of 2024 with too much precipitation and cold soil temps, then followed up with the lack of rainfall and extreme temps, too.

I’m thankful I adjusted my tillage practices to include very little conventional tillage, some minimum tillage and mostly no-till, for the most part, since we experienced several weeks of little to no rainfall and extreme triple-digit heat indexes.

Every 28 days, I did my best to take a cutting of alfalfa or grass. Unfortunately, the lack of rainfall decreased the tonnage from a couple cuttings, but just as the alfalfa started to bloom.

I usually cut to capture the bright, leafy-green stemmed hay. I successfully harvested six cuttings of hay this summer in a timely manner without getting any of the hay wet.

Q: Once harvest is over, what is next for you?

A: Harvest may be over, but I still have corn and soybeans in storage to market at a later date. Hopefully, we have a mild winter, so I can easily travel the backroads and highways to make my hay deliveries to customers and auctions without the challenges of drifted roads and the bitter cold of Old Man Winter to sell my excessive supply of hay and straw.

Q: Anything else you’d like to mention in our final story?

A: For the last couple years extensive planning and preparations have been underway for the 2025 State and National Corn Husking Competition located in Nappanee in northern Indiana at Reed Farms.

We are thankful for their hospitality and the ability to host this large event over two separate Saturdays in the month of October. We are anxiously waiting to share this event with spectators and huskers that travel from all parts of the United States to the Hoosier state to relive the days of corn harvest prior to machine and a family-oriented fun competition.

In 2025, the Indiana contest will be Oct. 4 and the national competition will be Oct. 18. Our banquet speaker will be Dr. Fred Whitford.