From the Fields: Watch what happens

In our area the rain started last Sunday night into early Monday morning. We ended up getting a good amount of rain out of that system, which continued on and off until Wednesday night. It moved very slow and kept coming around central Indiana and dumped around 5 inches locally. Conditions turned from ideal to mud and now we are in a holding pattern until the ground gets fit to run on. We hope by midweek we will be able to start running some corn and get everything rolling along as we slide into the harvest groove.

We did a series of YouTube videos this year following a hybrid out of LG Seeds corn lineup with our area sales manager. We finished our final video last week featuring a yield check as we wrapped up the season. We went out in a random spot in the field and did a stand count, ear count and yield check, which resulted in a 262 bushels per acre estimate. We used 85,000 seeds to be conservative for our estimate and guessed it to be around 30% moisture. I’m incredibly happy with that number and hope it will be even better once we get into it with the combine.

We plan on following all guidelines and having a judge out to make sure we are doing things correctly so our entry will be valid. It started out as something for our seed dealership to promote hybrids that succeed in our area, but I must say it’s been fun to make the videos and follow the corn more closely all year long. If you’re interested check it out on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuK-dmV2jgM or my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/will.swope.5.

We think everything is ready to go for harvest. I’m sure we will have a few hiccups, but all in all we are field ready and excited to get some crops ran. I’m happy with where we are sitting right now in our area. I don’t know how long these prices will stick around and we won’t know the whole picture for a while until we start getting some state and national averages out together by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

I think it’s important to have a plan in place for stored bushels, as well as overflow bushels, if our yields hold out to be as good as we hope they are. I don’t want to get caught up in the emotions of holding out for higher prices when we can lock in good numbers now and might be left with holding the short end of the stick if something happens between now and first of the year. It’s a roller-coaster ride either way we look at it.

Hope everyone can take advantage of the weather forecasted for next week. Looks like good harvesting weather for a large area. Stay safe and happy harvesting.