Harvest

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Reaping the Harvest

Reaping the Harvest; what started months prior, with soil sampling, seed selection, planting, fertilizing, spraying, and praying for rain, climaxing with gathering the crop that we worked so hard to produce.

Operations Corn

We operate two combines and two grain carts in the harvest field when the corn yield is high. Unloading on the go from the combine to the grain cart creates optimum efficiency. Our truck lineup will vary as well, depending on distance to the elevator and the yield of the crop. Three to four semi’s are usually sufficient to keep the combines moving forward when hauling to the bin or elevator. For extra storage we started utilizing grain bags at the edge of the field.

Bags vary in size, but the ones we use hold around 12,000 bushels. It takes a special machine to load the bag, but it saves time and labor as the cart dumps directly into it, eliminating the need for trucks. Using another machine at a later date, we unload the grain from these bags and haul it to the market end point.

Operations Wheat

For wheat we use shelbourne headers to leave as much stubble standing as possible. Stripper header harvested stubble provides more moisture conserving benefits than conventionally harvested stubble. Research has found that the stripped wheat stubble reflects heat, reducing evaporation. It also increases water infiltration, traps snow and, ultimately, increases soil water storage furthering the reduction of evaporation.

That makes planting corn in this stubble the following spring a suitable environment for an area that only gets 20 inches per year rainfall. Keeping the moisture more readily available with a mulch of straw.

Technology & Data

The grain cart operators monitor and log the scales data loaded out of each field. One of which is on an ipad, which can also be viewed from the combine via bluetooth to the iphone. Each load is recorded on each field and a summary can be emailed back to the office for printing. The second cart we run in fall crops keep a written record which is added to the electronic record after each field is completed. This final summary includes cart scales weight, time loaded, field, gps location, and elevator account number. This helps keep everything straight when checking ticket errors by totaling loads for each field.

Elevator scale tickets and grain cart logs from the prior days harvest is checked, recorded and filed for future reference. At the end of harvest, data from the combines can be downloaded and printed for the file as well which includes yield from every portion of the field. This data is important to the landlords and the insurance agent who keeps a record of average yield history. This yield data also needs to be recorded at the FSA office and crop insurance team.

Insurance

We carry Federal Crop Insurance and report our yields after each harvest to calculate into a running average for each field. The price of insurance depends on the level we choose. We typically use a 70% – 75% level, picking the point of “Best bang for our buck”. In the event of a loss, the insurance price (obtained from a futures average during the month of harvest) will be multiplied by the coverage percent of our proven yield developed from each year. It is very important to maintain good yield averages to optimize insurance returns.

Wheat Harvest 2025

Sporatic rains last fall determined what areas we had good enough wheat stands to sustian a good yield. As wheat come out of dormancy this spring, the dry conditions continued which made this years crop good in some places and not so much in others. However, the yield was better than expected with numerous thins spots througout.

The price of wheat remains volitile as the focus remain on global unrest. This can make for a short window of opportunity to market for a profit. Two varieties, Wolverine and WD4595 somewhat rose above the others. However, we are blessed to get whatever bounty there was with this years crop.

Wheat Harvest Highlights

Whole farm average was 66 bushels per acre.
Test weights ranged from 56 to 61 pounds per bushel.
Grain moisture content averaged around 10.5%.
The highest yield was 85 bushels per acre.
The lowest yield was 43 bushels per acre
The stubble left for ecofallow was good in some places and thin in others.

Corn Harvest 2024

This year we began planting once again with a low profile of moisture. However, not long into our planting the rains come. And they kept coming. That delayed planting until mid to late May. During the growing season we were fortunate enough to get some timely rains to keep the yield potential promising. Harvest was very intermittent due to the moisture content in the grain, but that meant good yields. Our whole farm dryland average was 148 bushels per acre and 236 on irrigated. Harvest moisture remained high but eventually dried down enough to put it in the bag for later delivery. Completed in the third week of November.