Farming Thread:

[btfarm]

Have cut 4th crop for years, the trick is to wait until if freezes hard, then cut. This will be the 2nd year on the field, I normally get 5 before replant.

The 5 yrs is about the same here. Saw a field this AM just south of DeKalb that should have been cut a few weeks ago and had frozen. Guess he goes to your school Marty because he was cutting it when I went back down to Sandwich this afternoon...:thumbsup: I just never heard of doing it that way. I was always paranoid about frost heave causing the roots to break and kill the plants.

 

[jmiller]

Finished beans yeasterday.

Wish corn would dry down some more.

 

[NAR]

Might finish digging beets tomorrow, or the next day. Kinda muddy so we had a slow day today. Corn is slowly getting drier.

 

[busdriver75]

we finally finished corn the thursday before thanksgiving. all the recreational tillage is done and equipment is put away before the shitty weather gets here.

 

[Brandon C.]

were getting close with having corn done started late this year cause we couldnt find a corn dryer at a good price finally did an now were behind from that an weather, but what do you expect from going from 25acres to 100acres in a year next year were going bigger yet. cant wait.

 

[aggar]

We got done friday before last. SOme tillage work to do but might not get done.

 

[btfarm]

What Northern Illinois looks like on Dec 30th. 1000s of acres of corn still standing, tractors and tillage equip waiting to finish. What a mess! On the positive side the standability is good on the GMO corn with RW gene.

These same guys had 4 big combines and 4 big carts going around the clock 2 weeks ago.

 

[NAR]

Quite a bit of that in the dakotas-mn area too I hear.

 

[Polarbear]

We finished 1500 acres of beans about mid oct then started on 4400 acres of corn. Finished that the tuesday before thanksgiving...
But im amazed there is still that much left out there... Even in our historic wet yr(07) I think everyone was done by the end of Dec... Whats the reasoning for not combining where the photos were taken? Are they simply waiting til it freezes so they dont destroy the field? Is there more snow on the corn than the photo shows?

 

[btfarm]

Whats the reasoning for not combining where the photos were taken? Are they simply waiting til it freezes so they dont destroy the field? Is there more snow on the corn than the photo shows?

Snow's about a foot deep and quite a bit of drifting. Too deep for the head to not pull it in and freeze up. Alot of ice in it too from an ice storm before the snow. To make matters worse it's still running around 20 to 25%. A few guys were trying it today but we've got 6-10" coming tomorrow night-Thurs.

 

[btfarm]

Here we are on Jan 28th and I was running down from Sycamore to Sandwich about 5:30 pm. +5* with a windchill at -15*. 2-3" snow on the ground from the last couple of days. If I didn't know any better I'd think it was October. Combines and grain carts in many fields and the rural roads are loaded with guys pulling hopper bottom trailers to get it to the elevators. Still a LONG way to go though.

 

[NAR]

Yeah I've heard of a lot of that back your way. Saw a few down in CO the other day that were combining...

 

[SfcJones]

I still have cotton that I can't get to. by the time it starts to dry out enough to pick it it rains again. I was hoping to get to this weekend...Raining so bad that it took out a portion of my driveway again.

 

[btfarm]

Made the same run again today. Just about everybody is shelling what's left. Ground is frozen hard and the snow is mostly down to 2" or so and clear skies with low 20s. Actually a nice day to be outdoors for me.

 

[NAR]

So BT did all that corn finally get done? I still see guys posting about their spring combining on agtalk. Some that still can't be done in MN and ND.

Spread fertilizer yesterday and rollerharrowed it in and started drilling barley today. Was spitting snow at me when I quit tonight. Doubt it will do much, probably be able to drill more tomorrow. Some years we would have had it in weeks ago, ground was too froze.

 

[durallymax]

We still have about 10 acres of corn standing. We were ready to combine it last fall but decided to quick get our compost barn hauled out that day instead. Well the next day we got 2" of snow and then the next day we got 18" of snow, so much for that idea.

Our friends from NW Illinois were in the same pickle. They had 120 acres of corn left. They shelled a bunch of it the day we were hauling manure/compost, then the next day got that little bit of snow, so they threw the shell corn head on the Claas and went out and harvested the 90 acres that was left, for snaplage. had it off by that night and were all ready for the big snowfall.

In January I saw a local farmer running his combine and his neighbors as well to try and get his done in a small window we got.

Today it was about 50* outside for most of the day. But there was still enough snow on the ground which meant about 10' of visibility. It sucked. But it was nice and warm.