Hailstorm reduces yield potential

ASHTON, Ill. — A hailstorm with strong winds that rolled through Lee County in north-central Illinois has reduced the yield potential for crops on William Henert’s farm.

“We had a big hailstorm in July, mainly to the west of us, but we caught a decent chunk of it here,” said William Henert, who farms together with his wife, Lea, and his parents, Nolan and Linda Henert.

“There was not a ton of green snap, but the hail and wind messed everything up,” William said. “There’s a crop out there, but it’s not a record. A few of the commercial fields are tangled up pretty good, but not all of them.”

From 40% to 50% of Henert’s fields were damaged by the storm.

“There will be an insurance claim ranging from hail defoliation and green snap to extra harvest expenses,” William said. “Now we’re wondering if we have to dig out the corn reel for a couple of fields, and nobody likes that statement.”

For the seed corn that Henerts grow for Wyffels Hybrids, the storm happened during the pollination period.

“That made the detasseling program a little more strung out and a lot more hand labor,” William said.

He has seen some sudden death in his soybean fields, but not a significant amount and no white mold so far.

“I haven’t seen any tar spot, but there probably is some, and corn rootworm beetle pressure wasn’t horrible — I’ve seen it a lot worse in the past,” he said. “We usually do two passes on our corn-on-corn acres, but we just did one pass this year because we didn’t think it was worth the time or money.”

However, William will be using his sprayer to defoliate some of the seed corn.

“I don’t know exactly how much they will do, but that will start this week,” he said on Aug. 18. “They try to harvest the crop two to three weeks after that.”

“At that point, harvest officially starts,” Lea said.

As a result, the Henerts have been working on harvest preparation including maintenance on the grain-handling system.

“We relined one of the grain dump pits with new sheets because it had rusted out a little bit so it needed to be rebuilt and we put a new auger in there,” William said. “We put a couple new sheets on the dryer where the wind had popped holes.”

The farmers are also working on yearly maintenance to make sure all the unloads and conveyor chains are all functioning properly, as well as test firing the dryer.

“Everybody thinks the grain system is easy, but it takes a lot of maintenance,” William said.

“We will be setting up the computer system at the grain system in the next two weeks — that’s my department” Lea said. “We need to make sure we can control the computer from our iPads and phones and the cameras are set up so we can monitor things while we’re in the field.”

Sometimes this requires updates on the iPads.

“And it never fails, you get everything set up, and about the day before harvest, there’s an update and you have to start all over again,” Lea said. “My goal is to have everything prepared by Sept. 10, including the freezer meals and the lunch stuff.”

The Henerts have trials on their farm looking at fungicides and the timing of application, but they might not learn much this year due to the storm damage in the fields.

“We put a couple of products in the planter that we didn’t have the ability before without a liquid system,” William said.

“We’ve found that just going off the yield map isn’t necessarily 100% accurate to make decisions for trial products,” Lea said. “The correct way to do trial work is to get the weigh wagon out, but since harvest is such a busy time, we’re not always willing to take time for that.”

With harvest quickly approaching, the Henerts enjoyed the last day of summer, since their son, Wilson, started school on Aug. 19.

“We’re just taking it all in,” Lea said. “We’re going to take a picnic and go for a walk.”