Week Ending September 11 We started the 2010 corn harvest on Tuesday September 7th
in the Farmer City area. Yields have
been highly variable. Field averages
have ranged from less than 150 to 190 bushels per acre. Moisture levels have ranged from 16 to 24%
depending on the hybrids. The better
yields are coming from the fields that are better drained.
With excellent planting conditions, the early planting date,
and fairly good early season weather, we were expecting higher yields this
year. The low yields appear to be the result of
excessive rains in late June that flooded out some of the low areas and stunted
much of the corn combined with excessive heat and dry conditions in August
while the crop was maturing. As shown in
the photos below, many of the ears are short with aborted kernels on the
end. The crop aborted the kernels late
in the season. The kernels that did make
it are very small as a result of poor weather conditions in the kernel filling
time during August.
Weather and field conditions were good this week and we were
able to make good progress with the harvest. We have been able to get over up to 270 acres
per day with one combine. We are again
running a Lexion 595R machine with a 16 row head. The
good thing about having poorer yielding corn is that we can run faster but I
would rather be running slower in better corn. We feel fortunate that we are getting as good
of yields as we are since there are reports around the state of yields much
lower than we are seeing.
The tillage crew got started later in the week. With the dry soil conditions the fields are
working up nicely. We are running two Krause
Dominators this year. We usually run
them together in the same field using GPS steering to maintain their working
widths.
After putting in
several long days we took Sunday off to go home, go to Church, and get
in some family time before we hit it hard again on Monday.
Below are some photos and videos from this week’s harvest.
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