Good start to harvest until stuff happened

AgriNews will follow Ken Ropp throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmer and the decisions he makes on his farm.

NORMAL, Ill. — All was running smoothly, until it didn’t, for Ken Ropp while he was harvesting a cornfield across from his dairy farm.

With this reporter tagging along on the combine’s jump seat, Ropp spoke about the good yields he and his dad, Ray, were seeing in their corn and soybean fields.

The first field they started harvesting was 10 acres across from the dairy that yielded 261 bushels per acre. While his dad was combining that field, Ropp was harvesting soybeans that were at 74 bushels per acre.

“There’s always bigger numbers out there, but in all honesty that field around my house that has been corn-on-corn since the Civil War went 223 bushels per acre,” Ropp said, joking about the Civil War time frame. “It’s amazing what genetics have done.”

The farm includes about 200 acres of corn and 200 acres of soybeans and is on the sixth cutting of alfalfa.

On Oct. 6, he was harvesting corn. All of the fields are a corn/soybean rotation except for the continuous cornfield adjacent to the dairy operation that is cut for silage.

“The yields have been just incredible and it’s a slow process. We play kind of that double-edge sword where the yields are amazing, it clogs up a little bit at the elevator. At the same time, imagine what the elevators are saving this year by not having drying costs,” Ropp said.

“You could imagine what those LP bills normally are like. This year, they can move that grain just as fast as we can get it in there, but at the same time then we’re more dependent on the trucks and the rail system and I’m sure they’re having trouble keeping up.

“We’ve been fortunate. The yields have been positive. We’re like everybody else. A lot of people were sitting and waiting. Do we wait for a rain? Do we just go ahead and hit it?”

Ropp was running the combine and Brett Yoder was taking the wagon to the bin to dump.

“For us, it’s a process. I don’t have the semis and I don’t have a whole lot of labor involved. So, with two of us, we can move a lot of product considering the circumstances and I’m comfortable with that,” Ropp said.

“We’ve got it down to a science. It takes Brett about seven minutes to be back here and ready for me to drop again after unloading the wagon.”

Unfortunately, moments after he said that at the end of a combine round, Yoder called and said the pickup truck that pulls the wagon was overheating.

With a full hopper, Ropp drove his combine across the road to the farmstead to meet Yoder.

What started as a good day of harvesting was sidetracked by a radiator problem.

“Every day is Monday,” Ropp grinned as radiator coolant was running onto the ground.

Cheese Business

The extended summer-like weather has been a boom for agritourism farms and that has extended to more demand for Ropp Jersey Cheese.

“October and November for us are huge with the orchards. They could not have asked for anything more with this weather. They haven’t had to shut down any days during the week because of wet weather,” Ropp said.

“We have a huge order going up to Jonamac Orchard at Malta this week. We have another huge order headed up to Tanners Orchard north of Peoria and another to Curtis Orchard in Champaign. Then there’s a smaller, new orchard called Okaw Valley at Sullivan, and they put in an order, too, and I’m grateful for it.

“It’s nice to see everybody picking up, but, holy cow, between being in the combine and being in the vehicle to deliver cheese, I don’t know where I need to be.”