Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Corn harvest hustle before rain

Hustled and worked late to finish the fall corn harvest.

Glad you got it in!

That can be some long days.

Good on you! Yields do well?

Overall average was 235 bushels/acre.

The end of harvest is a good feeling, even better if yields and prices are both above average.

I'm still finding bees wings corn cob chaff in jacket pockets and in my old mountaineer.

Outstanding!

Your corn average was 6x ours. We had historic drought from mid June through early October. The last good rain we had was 5 days before tassel. Corn harvest was about a month ahead of normal and averaged right around 40. However, even in a normal year 150 is pretty good around here.

Just curious, but did 40 BPA cover your costs?

I'm not sure that would cover my fertilizer costs.

Ouch.

No, not even close. We have a great corn basis here, and this year we had an incredible basis. We bought out of forward contracts early at little to no cost and sold everything across the scales locally for $7.50-$8.00/bu at harvest. Even at those prices our all in break even was 60-65 bu/ac.

That sucks.

Our farms are all irrigated, mostly with center pivots.

Don't take offense, but if I had to irrigate to farm, I would not farm.

No offense taken. We don't farm, we rent the ground, 640 acres that I traded pre-'64 Winchester 70s for to a guy who told me about this site, and around 3,700 acres that my wife inherited from her parents. My wife's family, both sides, came from Germany in the 1880s, long before they discovered the irrigation water held in the Ogallala Aquifer.

Location, location. My paternal family came from Prussia (Germany) and settled in Wisconsin in 1855, but did not start farming until 1862. We have experienced some dry years but never resorted to irrigation. I would say we have been blessed all those years.

Our irrigated farms produced around 94,000 bushels of beans and 735,000 bushels of corn this year, good for us and good for the people who farm that ground.

Thats a very good average! Well done!!

Not to many people around here bale corn stalks. Do you track soil data on these farms? Just curious.

Yes, I have contracted with a local elevator company. I didn't do a study on feeding corn fodder, but some experts say it will reduce hay requirement. I don't feed it out constantly, rather as a treat. The cows come running when they know it is available.

In some situations I use it as bedding for the young stock.

The drought and heat here really hurt the corn yields. They were all over the board, depending on whether or not it rained on your field, but still way below average. We're still playing catch up on the rain, as it's been a very dry fall as well.

Crazy how different locations dictate what is "normal". Here in the central Ca San Joaquin Valley (some of the best farm ground in the world) irrigation is mandatory. We get ZERO rain from about April 1st through December 1st.... all of our rainfall comes in the winter and the snow at higher elevations is stored in reservoirs for use in the summer. Dairy guys who rotate silage corn and silage oats don't have to irrigate the winter/spring oats but they will in an extreme drought year. Maybe some guys on really marginal, hilly ground will gamble and try for a dry land crop but it is usually just as profitable to run cows or just lease it to a cattle guy to graze.

Thanks for that! I find it very interesting how differently farming can be done "right". Am interested if you track soil organic matter on the fields you bale?