Done combining

Finally got done today here in north central Iowa, how are other people doing? Now it’s time to get ready for trapping season especially since it opens Saturday.

I don't think anybody is close to being done here. A lot of beans and a lot of corn.

Still have 600 acres of beans and 200 acres of corn. Snow forecasted next two days, it’s not looking good

A lot of prevent planted acres here, and what got planted was late so it is late harvesting. Probable 2/3 of beans done and most corn to be done.

They are finishing beans, most of the corn not ready yet. old243

I’ve heard a lot of guys around say that the corn isn’t ready and it’s still standing in the field, and snow is coming, and they are trying to do those stupid beans, we are corn, alfalfa, and small grains, our old dryer set up ran as hard as it has in years for the amount of corn. Hopefully next year we can change it to handle more bushels per hour.

We Finished up last Friday. Corn is just about wrapped up here. Still lots of beans to go

Finished up Friday. A lot of other guys are done or just about. Earliest finish in 2 decades. 2 combine fires. Battery cable rubbed and sparked one. Grabbed extinguisher and put it out which also blowed it over the side and started 5 more piles! No harm done, hosed her down, wrapped the cable and rolled.

Done here and glad to be!

Our corn is completed. 70 acres of beans to go and the weather is not cooperating.

Most silage is coming off around me but maybe 20% of silage acres left. Very little HMSC is being combined yet ( wet corn and wet ground). No body combining dry grain yet. There are many fields of beans left as ground is too wet. Some fields will need to freeze hard before harvest can be done. Some surprising silage yields reported in some areas, but most is below the 5 year average. We had 2 plus inches of wet snow that mostly melted so that stopped harvest and adds moisture to beans and the soil. Silage harvest is taking way more time, way more fuel and is adding a lot of stress to the farmers in our area. When conditions are OK everything is 24 hours per day and it is just slower in the dark.

Bryce

Hey Bob- those “stupid beans” you speak of pay a lot of bills around here. Perhaps you’d shell 20% moisture corn and let the snow lay your beans down but here we do things a little different. That corn will take the snow much better than beans. My hats off to those fellas trying to get beans out.

Starks have the beans done, my old friend Norm said they have just over 10,000 acres
What's the corn moisture running?

They hit the beans hard here this week and last week but still a lot of corn still in the fields maybe we get a good freeze and they can get around better without sinking. See a few rat houses but nothing great yet it will take a few years for them to spread out.

Done with beans 2 weeks ago. Tremendous yields, averaged 86 bushels an acre. One 160 acre field made 91. 3/4 done with corn, 1500 acres left. Yields are averaging 250 an acre. With a 12 row combine, it won't take long.

Got all my beans done last week and another week of good running will finish up mine and my old mans corn. That’s if we can get trucks, our bins are all filled and peaked to the max.

No fires here latest we’ve been in close to 30 years, trapper bo in this area we are lucky to break 50 bushel beans compared to 200 bushel corn we can make more money in corn the bank also prefers it because you can guarantee money money though federal crop, most guys here raise them because they think they can combine them faster than corn and it didn’t work that way this year, also we don’t raise any for this reason. Corn around here has been 18 to 20 percent on some but some is still up in the 28 range. Yeah Jerry here I’m guessing the rat population is going to down because we had so rain it raised the ditches fast and multiple times around here thats hard on the rats because they can’t leave fast enough then if the do they don’t have bank dens that high they can get into to hide from predators. We’ve got the most corn ever, bins are full and fortunately stock trucking could get here and haul when we needed them to.

Hats off to you guys, lot of hard work and a lot of risk every year, financially and physically. Keep safe and thanks from a non farmer......jk

Hey, you farmers! What time of year should you spread manure on a field? Would November be okay, or is it more likely to be done in the spring?

I grew up in farm country, and can remember the smell when they were spreading manure. I kind of liked it, actually.

Jim

Interesting thread. What kind of beans are you growing? And is the corn all feed corn?

Thank you jk, James depends on your situation liquid hog manure and dry chicken litter mainly goes on in the fall here but when we had cattle and hogs we hauled 9 months out of the year, we planted some corn really late and then started chopping early just to haul. Bushmaster I take it you wondering the type and that would be soybeans, here it would probably be about a 50/50 spilt between feed and ethanol, but then they do feed distillers grain so not sure how to classify that. Bblwi I can only imagine that stress, dad and mom were in Milwaukee in early September for meetings and a wedding and they commented on how green everything was and that silage hadn’t been done yet.

We try and get it on in the fall here. Get the ground ripped and let it set for the winter. We have to let the ground gather moisture and let the freeze-thaw breakdown the clods. In wetter country you could probably get by with spring application.

Sitting in the semi right now. Finishing soybeans tonight. Took the prevent plant insurance option on a lot of corn acres, didn’t really even know about that until this year. Chopped some corn for silage, have someone coming to do earlage tomorrow. Trying to find ways to use the corn without combining the wet crap. Terrible greensnap, here, from two strong wind events. Another dose of wind a couple of weeks ago broke off some more crappy stalks. Need to get a bunch of stalk bales made yet for bedding and stock cow feed. All I’m getting out of this year is one year older........actually probably aged two years this year. Could be worse, though......

Thanks, guys. I need that info for a story. Mid-November is when I have it being spread, in central Kentucky, and it sounds like that time will work.

My Dad calls the smell "country perfume." We never lived where they raise hogs, though.

Jim

Actually Pawnee up here its too wet and the clods can be the size of medicine balls or bigger, then the trenches start oh what a mess.

In our area we try hard NOT to have to spread in the spring. We get a late start to planing to begin with and taking time to haul and spread delays that a lot plus many try to go as soon as they can and many times a tad wet and more compaction. We need frost to loosen our red clay soil here. Many of our growing farmers however don't have capacity to hold enough manure to make it later. Many apply manure on winter wheat fields in August after harvest. We also have some put limited amounts 5,000 gallons or less on just cut alfalfa as a way to spread some and that does not utilize the N very well at all. Those with digesters spread a lot of the lower solids liquid on hay fields after 1-3 cuttings as it adds some moisture in the hot summer and helps yields. In the fall more and more manure is injected as applied. This takes longer to apply but then no other trips or issues if a big rain comes etc.

Bryce

We’re finished corn, got 320 acres soybeans left to cut. Hope to knock them out by end of next week. See how the weather cooperates. Haven’t seen them below 13% yet this fall

John

Very late planting around here with all the rain this spring. Decent amount of rain now too keeping everyone out of the fields. Cabbage is being picked from before daylight to well after dusk trying to get as much of it picked before this weekend. Lows in the mid teens Saturday. I would estimate only 80% of our fields locally have been planted and what did get planted the yields suffered a lot being so late. 75% of the corn and beans are still unharvested.

Wow, 91 bushels, 60 was a lot 40 years ago

Most guys spread their manure in the fall around here, but I have seen it done in the spring some too. I plant all pioneer soybeans and corn. I’m not 100% sure on where the soybeans go after we sell them to the elevator, but I know we have at least 3 ethanol plants within 50 miles of my farm, so the corns getting turned into fuel.

Yes 60 bushels is still well above the nations average. Most years the average yield for soybeans in the USA runs from the mid 40s to the low 50s. Yields over 75 bushels per acre are quite rare but great to get. That makes beans very competitive in the high yielding corn areas even, with the lower input costs. Our beans in our area this year will be much closer to half of the 91 bushels if that.

Bryce

Just curious, how deep do they inject the liquid manure? Manure is surface spread on our land.

I've been wanting to ask this question for a long time to a farmer and never had the opportunity. When you guys are combining corn, do you jump a lot of deer? The reason why I am asking is my property adjoins about 200 acres of corn and it hasn't been cut yet. I've been archery hunting and I haven't been seeing much lately, I'm just curious to what extent do deer hide/bed in standing cornfields?

Beans are all done & have about 30 ac of corn to go, but have got 2 3/4 in of rain in the last 2 days & it is still raining.

Just got home from a South Dakota pheasant hunt the area where I hunted just started combining last Thursday it gave pheasant plenty hiding place. They said less than 10 percent of crops had been harvest so far,

Heard on the weather this morning that some parts of Iowa could get up to 5" of snow. It looked like eastern Iowa.

That could ruin a lot of snare locations

PaRay, yes the deer do stay in the corn. When the corn gets picked you will start seeing more deer.

We try to inject at the bottom of the plow layer or about 8 to maybe 12 inches. We need to go deep enough so it can be covered over by the upper shovels and not ooze back out of the injection site and run in the field.
It is a slow process but we are also using big diesel pumps about every 1 to 1.5 miles and hooking those together and in some cases we can pump manure 2 plus miles and this keeps a lot of trucks off the roads which is really great from a safety and a road wear aspect. Our town roads were not made for thousands of semis with forage and manure going over them 6-9 months per year.
Just as an example if 1,000 cow herd with 800 heifers which we will equate to 1400 cows. With a liquid manure system we get 15K to 20 K of manure per cow per year so with 17k as the average that is about 24 million gallons per year. At 6,000 gallons per truck that close to 4,000 semi loads per year. If we harvest 10 tons of corn silage and 4 tons of haylage per cow that is 14 tons per cow or just shy of 200,000 tons. If we get 15 tons on each load that is 1,306 semi loads per year. I may be a bit low on the tons per load but you get the idea. That is just those two items. As one can see that is a lot of semi traffic coming and going from one large farm unit.
Sorry I was off by a factor of 10 on the silage semis.
Bryce

Thanks, Bryce.

Central MN, some are just finishing beans, some are half way done. No one has started on the corn in the 80 mile round trip I make every day. The fields that have beans ready to come out...are too wet to get in to. I'm trapping in a very heavy soil area.

Guys here with beans left that I’ve talked to after we got a little bit of snow the beans gain 3 points of moisture to about 16 percent and some don’t have bin space to be able to get air on them to dry them back down. One thing is if I was in that situation I could dry them with our old roof top. Does anyone on here dry beans with a dryer or do you just let them air dry?

In our area close to Lake Michigan almost all beans get air here and some need drying. This year that may well be the case when we can go in the fields. I talked with several farmers tonight and a mill manager that he and his brother run 700 acres too. They are saying that the may wait on beans until they can travel on frozen ground which will take some upper teens here. Several that were able to harvest their beans were saying middle to lower 50 bushel was common. The beans that are left in the lower, flatter ground are not that good.

Bryce

Bob, we use a batch dryer to dry soybeans. We prefer to harvest dry, however with our proximity to the water, humidity stays elevated, and most of our beans are harvested at 15% or so. We dry them to 13 and keep air on them , stored in bins. The mills dock way too much for moisture, way better off to dry them and store on farm.

John Bruning
Bruning Farms llc

I wondered that I know some still windrow beans in certain areas of the u.s. but rare.

In our climate we would never dare to cut and windrow soybeans. I checked with some drying firms today and more beans get dry than I thought. Not half of them but many bushels get dried. One of the reasons is that around here in most years the beans won't drop below 15-16 percent and leaving them out longer increases field losses so farmers are willing to pay for some drying to save more beans.

We also have to put a lot of air on our winter wheat as that also does not dry down to 13% around here often but air will get them down. Wheat heats up really fast if combined even a tad wet.

Bryce

Over here where I live most of the beans are done and some of the corn. It was late plant here and now for the harvest. There is places that I trap need to wait it out for the crops to be out.No problem then that to set today here get the spots that will work out .

Speaking of manure, or liquid fertilizer, the farmer north of me gets Waste from the local treatment plant and the plant spreads it on his fields.
They drive the trucks right into the field and back and forth they go all the while spraying the liquid.

This was done in Sept if I recall.

I've seen the same with the liquid from large dairy outfits.

Do the farmers have to pay for this stuff?
Any idea on the cost say /acre?

Some crops have been harvested here, but much is still in the field. Wet!

Municipal sludge applied to fields in most cases farmers do not pay for the sludge, the cities are looking for ways to get rid of the sludge. They don't need to buy or rent land which would add greatly to the cost. The sludge is quite highly concentrated in nutrients, especially N. They do follow the phosphorus regs Or P but apply considerable N to the soil. They need and want heavy soils like we have in the eastern WI area as the N will not leach into the ground water.

As to farmers that get liquid dairy manure from dairy farmers? There is a wide range of agreements. Many farmers provide forage and other crops for dairies that don't have enough land base for feed and manure application so the dairies many times apply liquid manure to fields where they buy the crops from. In most cases there is a value placed on the manure based on nutrient analysis and the cost of buying N, P and K. In most cases this is a bit higher than the cost of pumping and application. Most custom manure service providers charge from 1 to 2.5 cents per gallon for pumping and application, so a dairy with say 10 million gallons of liquid manure, say 700 cows will pay about $175,000 to have the manure pits emptied and applied. For rough figuring let us say 1,000 gallons of manure is worth $10 which means the value is %100,000 or it costs the farmer roughly 75,000 dollars more than the manure is worth to get rid of.

Bryce

This is interesting,Bryce. Thanks.

The good part here is at least we’re done so I can trap some if I can get out and set something, here most manure is given away but the person who is getting has to pay for the application which depends on the gallons but most will run between 80 to 120 dollars an acre which is really high for a non guaranteed product. Here its hog manure in liquid so you don’t get the same overall value as the dairy manure because of the roughage in the cows diets also in the hog feed rations here they are putting products in the feed to maximize the nutrient absorption by the hogs so it lowers the amount in the manure so you must apply more gallons to hit the same level of nutrients as before and it cost more per acre.

I am a big fan of manure/ not really cracked over sludge.

I agree about the sludge. Who knows what folks flush down the drain. All kinds of cleaning chemicals, excreted medicines, industrial chemicals, etc find the way to the sewage treatment plants. You wouldn't put sludge on your garden.

Farmers in our area that accept municipal sludge can not raise beets, carrots, green beans etc. on those acres, also manure can not be applied as well, which means there are several acres where organic fertilizers can not be utilized. For those that raise organic crops such as vegetables etc. they use green manure fertilizer and some other treated forms of organic nutrients.

Bryce

What town are you close to in Central KY? Is it your homestead?

To bad the rectums who P&M about food costs do not find and read this. Many have no idea what, where , and how the food got to the stores. Tut