Harvest nears completion: Sunflowers will be the last crop gathered

LELAND, Ill. — With the warm, dry conditions, harvest is almost complete at Riskedal Farms, where some corn and sunflowers remain to be picked.

“Soybeans are done and they were average,” said Stephen Riskedal who farms together with his dad, Brad, and his grandfather, Steve.

“It is exciting to be average when we cut a lot of costs on soybeans this year by reducing herbicides because we used cover crops to suppress weeds,” Stephen said.

“We hit the soybeans hard early on, so we got a lot of them out at 12% to 13% moisture,” he said. “One or two days we stopped earlier in the evening and waited until the next morning to get an extra point of moisture.”

The sorghum is harvested, which was a new crop for the farmers this year.

“It fell a little short of our goal, but there are some things we can do to definitely improve it,” Stephen said. “For a new crop, I’m not going to throw it out after the first year.”

Both the sorghum and sunflowers were grown for birdseed and the sunflowers will be the last crop for the farmers to harvest this fall.

“The sunflowers need a good, killing frost to help them dry down,” Stephen said.

“We have 500 or less acres of corn left to harvest,” the farmer said on Oct. 21.

“We’ve been working with low-nitrogen corn and learning how cycling nutrients can reduce nitrogen applications,” he said. “So, one of our big wins is we had one field that was above average actual production history that we did on 0.41 pounds of nitrogen per bushel.”

Stephen spends a significant amount of time during the fall planting cover crops with a 40-foot air seeder.

“Cover crops will be planted on 100% of our ground and some will have wheat,” he said.

“And we plant cover crops including radishes, lentils, flax and mustard with our wheat right in the furrow, which are all things that do some pretty good things for the soil, but also winter kill,” he explained.

“Right now, they are growing well with wheat, and once it turns cold enough, they’ll die off and the wheat will come back next spring.”

The radishes help scavenge nutrients, and as they decompose, they give those nutrients to the wheat roots, Stephen said.

“The mustard helps reduce soybean cyst nematode numbers,” he said. “We don’t have a soybean cyst nematode problem, but this is another tool in our toolbox.”

For fields that will be soybeans in 2026, Stephen plants primarily cereal rye and for some fields rapeseed is blended with it.

“Ahead of corn, I plant a blend of winter barley, balansa clover and rapeseed which is a new blend for us this year,” he said. “The major goals are erosion control and weed suppression with a little bit of nitrogen fixation with the clover.”

One thing he likes about the rapeseed is its winter hardiness.

“And it exudes an acid from its roots that helps make phosphorus more soluble,” he said. “A lot of phosphorus gets locked up in our soil and when you apply DAP you might only get 10 to 15% available, so these root exudates help make the phosphorus plant available.”

The sunflowers this year were a double crop after wheat and they were interseeded with buckwheat, mustard, radish and flax.

“We picked cover crops that were short and wouldn’t compete with the sunflowers,” Stephen said. “As the sunflowers are dying, there are still plants in the undergrowth that are photosynthesizing and doing good stuff for the soil.”

Buckwheat also solubilizes phosphorus, but it is a warm-season plant versus rapeseed which is a cool-season plant.

“The more I learn about different things plants can do for the soil, the more excited I get,” Stephen said.

Grazing Season

He already has plans to make some changes for next year with the cattle that are grazing a field with a 12-way cover crop blend.

“I have about 150 calves that came in over a one- to two-week period and a lot of them were in small groups,” the cattleman said.

“I’ve learned that I’m going to try to get larger groups from fewer places with better vaccinations to avoid some heartache next year,” he said. “But in total it has gone well and I have had some great support from local cattle producers who have given me advice, as well as a veterinarian who has been phenomenal to work with.”

The cattle have respected the single-wire hot fence to partition the field.

“Moving them has worked really well and I think I have a good stocking rate,” Stephen said. “I’ll probably have extra forage and that might allow me to extend my grazing season, but water is my limiting factor on how long I can graze the cattle.”

Country Lights

This is a busy time for the Country Lights candle business that is operated by Stephen’s older brother, Darren, and his wife, Kendall, from their home in southern Wisconsin.

“This is go-time for the candle fundraisers since the majority are in the fall before Christmas,” Darren said.

In addition, the Riskedals set up a booth at the National FFA Convention & Expo in Indianapolis to promote fundraising opportunities for FFA chapters.

“The convention is almost a reunion for us because we see people that Kendall and I knew back when we were in FFA and 4-H,” Darren said.

As a result of participating in events like the National FFA Convention, the family has shipped candles from coast to coast.

“We’ve sent candles to Maine, Alaska and a lot to Florida and Texas,” Darren said. “I’ll bet it’s 20 states that have organizations doing fundraisers.”

One of the challenges with the fundraisers, he explained, was the large number of orders they would receive shortly after Thanksgiving.

“Until they sent me the orders, I would have zero idea of how many they sold or what fragrances they sold,” he said.

To address this challenge, Darren built an app that organizations can use for taking electronic orders for the candles, wax melts and fidget sniffers.

“The orders are sent to me instantly, so I can track how many each school is selling and the fragrances, which makes the planning and logistics a lot easier,” he noted.

“One of the really powerful things about the app is it turns a fundraiser into a competition amongst the students,” he said. “It tracks a leader board that compares them to people in the organization, as well as across the whole group of organizations we have doing fundraisers.”

The kids have really liked the app, Darren said, and they are comfortable with electronic ordering.

“It makes it easier on whoever is organizing the fundraiser because they don’t have to manually enter all of the orders into a spreadsheet to send to me,” he said. “I’m hoping that also reduces some of the errors because there’s no manual moving of numbers.”

Another big change will occur for the family in November.

“As of the middle of November, I will be working full time with the candle business and leaving my other job,” Darren said. “It has been our goal for the candles to be a full-time job for one or both of us.”

He has worked as precision equipment specialist since graduating from the University of Illinois.

“It will be a change because I was at the same job for almost 10 years,” he said. “If they had given me a reason to leave, it would be a lot easier to do, but that’s just not the truth, because I’ve enjoyed it.”

Working full time with Country Lights will give Darren the opportunity to develop some new products for the business such as room sprays or air fresheners.

“The extra stuff has not happened, like the things to make the business better and grow, because we just haven’t had the time to do it right,” he said. “We’ve done what needed to be done to sustain it because that’s what we had time to do.”