Happy Harvest! That’s right, it’s go time. Harvest is underway on our farm and everywhere around us this week. It’s a bit later than normal because of the late planting (which has impacted things all season), but moving forward.
Here’s the weekly #FollowtheField update on all three fields we’re watching this season:
10/18/19 Update:
Cover crop soybeans (158 days – harvest completed)
First field in and now first field out this year. These soybeans were one of three fields planted in mid-May while the rest of the farm was planted when we had a nice weather window the three weeks later during the first week of June.
Harvest in this field was completed today, with the combine moving on to another field right away. Early yield estimates in this field indicate that yields were very close to average for our farm, which is awesome considering the roller coaster of a year we’ve had so far.
Here’s what remains in the field. We haven’t done any tillage in this field, so you can see all of the soybean residue, or leftover stalks and pods on top of what was left of last year’s cover crop. We planted barley and crimson clover crop seed by airplane at the beginning of October, and the barley is just starting to pop up. Since this field will be corn next year, phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) fertilizer will be spread at some point this fall (we generally apply fertilizer every other year before a corn crop rather than every single year). Fertilizer application rates will be dictated by what we know from our soil tests for this field.
That’s a cloud of dust behind the combine. Soybeans tend to be dusty.
Corn (136 Days)
The corn is still here…for now. Since the soybeans are ready, we’ll likely harvest all of our soybeans before switching the combine over for corn harvest. We’re still waiting for the corn to dry down as much as it can using Mother Nature before we harvest it and take it to the elevator for mechanical drying. Corn must be at 15% moisture for storage and preservation purposes. We have to pay by percentage point for the drying for each bushel. So any extra drying we can capture from Mother Nature means a little less we have to pay out of pocket. I’ll be taking a sample from this field and all of the other corn fields to the elevator tomorrow so we can test the moisture and understand exactly where this and the other fields are.
It’s been really cold at night here in Central Illinois. Like, freezing cold some nights. We had our first frost last Friday and a couple more since then. That’s a really bad thing to happen when the crop is still growing since it will kill the plant, but we were lucky in that we’re pretty sure this corn was black layered and physiologically mature (like I touched on last week). But notice how green the leaves still are in the photo above? That tells me that the frosts we’ve had have been relatively light and the corn plants on the inside of the field are still likely alive, which is still good for us because that means the corn plants will continue the natural drying down process, aided by Mother Nature. Win-win.
If you zoom in on the photo, you can see how the corn leaves that were/are green on the outside of this field are a kind of faded/dusty green (I called it eucalyptus green). Those are the plants that died as a result of the frost, which we can tell by the change in the green that’s still there.
Once we know where the field stands in terms of moisture we’ll have a better idea of when harvest will begin in corn, but it will likely begin before the end of the month, weather permitting.
No-till soybeans (133 Days)
Back to soybeans. Nothing to report here other than this field is just hanging out and waiting for us to harvest these soybeans. It’ll be a few days before we get to these soybeans since we’ll try to finish the soybean fields that were planted before this one.
I just love the nice, neat rows you can see in fields at this time of year.
More harvesting hopefully happening tomorrow (fingers crossed it doesn’t rain). Our 4-H club’s annual harvest lunch at the grain elevator is happening tomorrow, too. They pack sack lunches with sub sandwiches, chips, an apple, and a homemade cookie for all farmers who stop by, either on their route to/from the elevator to dump grain or sent home with the appointed lunch runner, who gathers the lunches for everyone working. Just a little thank you to the farming community for their support of our 4-H club and a fun thing to do when harvest is in full swing. 🙂