How's The 2010 harvest?

[btfarm]

Here in N. Illinois, the crops have come in at a record pace thanks to early planting and harvest and especially a beautiful dry sept and oct. 100% of the beans are in the bin and a good 90+% of the corn. Alot of fall fieldwork is done and anhydrous is going in now as well as quite a bit of wheat planted. Last year very few fields had been harvested before nov 1st.

 

[bison]

Up here it was generally lousy.
i'm glad i only had haying to do.No rain all spring and summer,small crop,quality good.

 

[GM Guy]

It went well here in Western KS. It is a little dry, so the wheat is being a little sassy when it comes to coming up, but otherwise some summer rains allowed all the dryland crops to do well. We got over 100 bushel/acre on our corn (need to get with old man to get exact) so I feel that we did pretty good. There is only a few stragglers as far as who got the crop in, so we are probably 95 percent done or better across the board. There are few people that do soybeans around here, but i hear they did decent.

It also appears the elevators havent loaded out much of this summers wheat, considering how each elevator has at least one huge ground pile. For once there is an advantage to a bed and hoist. they let you freely dump on the edge of the grain pile while there is a huge line of semis waiting at the beltveyor.

 

[RI Chevy Silveradoman]

In Rhode Island it is a shame that much of the land around my house went un-farmed. In the past, every bit of farm land had a crop in it. The old farmer died, now only a small patch of land was farmed. I think it is a sin to let the land go without at least having something planted. It would certainly help feed the people who need food and vegetables.

 

[treegump]

New at this whole actively participating in farming thing, but when I arrived in Cut Bank, Montana, it was wet and they were building grain bin flooring. When it finally dried up, they taught me how to drive a tractor trailer and I drove that out to my first field, and then they taught me how to operate a CASE 7120 combine with a 40' straight? head for cutting wheat. (3) 7120's cut for...I think 3 weeks and got all but maybe 3000 acres done for the custom harvester's personal crop. We loaded #1 combine onto a trailer along with 1 pup trailer, the crew trailer, service trailer, and 3 or 4 grain trailers....so 4 semi's, with 3 of them hauling doubles, and a pickup truck that was the spotter/flagger. We are in South dakota and finished all but maybe 60ish acres of corn before rain and snow hit. The farmers we are cutting for (Buhler Farm in Onida, South Dakota) will finish that field, and we are now waiting for 1600 acres of sunflowers to dry out. (Oh, I'm not driving a combine with corn or sunflowers - I've been given the responsibility of being 1 of 2 grain cart operators. 245 with a sunflower and then a 1085 staggered brent...but moving onto a CASE 335 with a bigger single axled red cart) (And as I asked just now, I found out that 600 may be given to another custom harvester... ) If you have specific questions on yield, moisture, and all that jazz, I should be able to get it together for you, since I've been given the responsibility to keep record of truck daily sheets, and graincart/elevator tickets.

 

[btfarm]

You're getting an excellent education out there Forest. Glad to hear it!
BTW, that head for combining wheat (or beans/small grain) is referred to as a grain platform. It's very similar to a mower/conditioner cutter head.

 

[NVW]

You're getting an excellent education out there Forest. Glad to hear it!
BTW, that head for combining wheat (or beans/small grain) is referred to as a grain platform. It's very similar to a mower/conditioner cutter head.

Mike, around here they are called straight cut headers.

The crops here were either F-all or fantastic, early seeded crops on sandy land were great, heavy land drowned out and late crops froze.

 

[btfarm]

Mike, around here they are called straight cut headers.

I thought maybe it was a regional thing. A corn head is still a corn head though isn't it?

 

[NVW]

I thought maybe it was a regional thing. A corn head is still a corn head though isn't it?

AFAIK, no corn grown for seed around me though, you have to go into southern Alberta.

Most cutting heads around now are 36' draper heads.

 

[treegump]

we've got 12 row corn headers and 8 row all crop headers. In Montana there was quite a bit of hail damage. And in South Dakota it sounded like it was a wet planting season, so if I remember correctly, they couldn't plant half of their crop because it was so wet. And believe me, they tried - left ruts in some of the fields.

I was also told that if I learned how cut wheat in Montana with the rocky hills, than I could pretty much cut anywhere.

 

[NAR]

Too cool here this spring, corn is all way down from average and last year. Haven't done any that was over 110 bushel where last year it was 160, and usually at least 140. Everyone here is way low. Been hearing that a lot on agtalk though, lots of places low on yield. All the custom stuff I have done was the same way.

 

[SnowDrift]

All our corn and beans are off. Corn probably averaged 160-170 or so. Beans probably averaged +60 - maybe closer to 65. For as dry as it was, it's not been a bad harvest and very little LP cost to dry. Just about everything went right into the bins. Crops are off and we finished chiseling last Sunday evening right as a rain shower was setting in - near perfect timing.

 

[trouttrooper]

winter wheat seemed to do fine here. Grass hay was superb. Planting weather didn't cooperate very well Spring/Summer wheat was late. Peas, Garbs, Lentils kinda sucked, couldn't get the chemicals in the ground at the right time and most of the fields were giant weed patches. Some guys got lucky and got stuff done between rainstorms, but not much.

This is what the farmers I deal with have told me + some observations myself.

 

[durallymax]

I was wondering how prices stayed so low with our record crop. Around here (South Central WI) the elevators have no clue what to do with all of the corn. BTW I am a little late in on this thread, even the oldest slowest farmers are done around here. Many people have been done for a month or so. Every elevevator I went to was piling corn and/or renting neighboring farmers bins for storage. One of the elevators leased a huge parking lot to store some of their corn. Its been a great bumper crop this year.

We were able to get out into the fields early for planting, and with last years late wet harvest many people around here planted early corn.

The weather was perfect all summer with very good growing conditions and great moisture. We had sidehills averaging 290bu/acre. Our overall average for 1600 acres was around 200 bu/acre. Some of those fields are just on shit ground. Saw the yeild monitor hit 299 bu/ac but never saw it hit 300.

We had tons of corn and it was all very dry and prices were very high. This really helped clear up the books a bit.


But we broke a lot of stuff too. During wheat a soil saver shank destroyed the rotor. We needed to put a new one in it anyways. Replaced it with an AFX rotor and holy cow was it a different animal.

During corn the combine got backed into a tree, with some hammers and comealongs we were able to get everything operational again but it was $5000 in parts.

The next day we noticed a low tire and went to air it up and found a pliers stuck in it, then noticed both of the rims were cracked badly. So we had to get a new rim and weld a support on the other one.

Then the unloading auger wore through and with some sheet metal and duct tape we were back and running again.

Also blew up the grain cart (640 Kinze), the guy running it folded the auger in instead of closing the gate, then reacted by folding the auger back out a full throttle and bang, a bunch of gears were laying on the ground.

We blew up a couple tires on trucks, and we destroyed a rim on our Mack Straight truck, it cracked all the way around the hand holes. The worst part was I just put a brand new Virgin FD663 on it and it got destroyed too.



And I hauled my record load, just under 1300 bushels, 114,400lbs. Shhhhhhh

 

[btfarm]

Alot of repair write-offs for you guys this year Vinny... Yikes!

 

[dms4x4]

But we broke a lot of stuff too. ....................

Dang........ And I thought I had problems keeping stuff running!!

Prices this year have been more eratic than any year I can ever remember. Hopefully you'll hit a high, and wait out the lows.

 

[bison]

I was wondering how prices stayed so low with our record crop. Around here (South Central WI) the elevators have no clue what to do with all of the corn. BTW I am a little late in on this thread, even the oldest slowest farmers are done around here. Many people have been done for a month or so. Every elevevator I went to was piling corn and/or renting neighboring farmers bins for storage. One of the elevators leased a huge parking lot to store some of their corn. Its been a great bumper crop this year.

We were able to get out into the fields early for planting, and with last years late wet harvest many people around here planted early corn.

The weather was perfect all summer with very good growing conditions and great moisture. We had sidehills averaging 290bu/acre. Our overall average for 1600 acres was around 200 bu/acre. Some of those fields are just on shit ground. Saw the yeild monitor hit 299 bu/ac but never saw it hit 300.

We had tons of corn and it was all very dry and prices were very high. This really helped clear up the books a bit.


But we broke a lot of stuff too. During wheat a soil saver shank destroyed the rotor. We needed to put a new one in it anyways. Replaced it with an AFX rotor and holy cow was it a different animal.

During corn the combine got backed into a tree, with some hammers and comealongs we were able to get everything operational again but it was $5000 in parts.

The next day we noticed a low tire and went to air it up and found a pliers stuck in it, then noticed both of the rims were cracked badly. So we had to get a new rim and weld a support on the other one.

Then the unloading auger wore through and with some sheet metal and duct tape we were back and running again.

Also blew up the grain cart (640 Kinze), the guy running it folded the auger in instead of closing the gate, then reacted by folding the auger back out a full throttle and bang, a bunch of gears were laying on the ground.

We blew up a couple tires on trucks, and we destroyed a rim on our Mack Straight truck, it cracked all the way around the hand holes. The worst part was I just put a brand new Virgin FD663 on it and it got destroyed too.



And I hauled my record load, just under 1300 bushels, 114,400lbs. Shhhhhhh

Sooo, like usuall,it ain't all profit.

 

[durallymax]

Dang........ And I thought I had problems keeping stuff running!!

Prices this year have been more eratic than any year I can ever remember. Hopefully you'll hit a high, and wait out the lows.

Thats a two way street with us though. being dairy farmers we want corn prices low when we need to buy corn products, but we want them high when we want to sell.

And no matter what the milk price still sucks.

 

[dms4x4]

I work for one of those big agri-businesses that uses lots of corn and soy meal. High grain or natural gas prices wipe out the bottom line fast. But we're doing good this year, anyway. Guess they've been able to pass the higher costs on better than in the past. The commodity business is a tough one, no matter where you're at in it. I noticed that the local corn price closed down 24 cents today again. I suspect talk of higher interest rates in China, and the possiblity of a higher dollar. Everyone has to eat, though, so it's not a bad business to be in. Just tough.