From the Fields: Optimistic about harvest

BREMEN, Ind. — As harvest season approaches in northern Indiana, farmers like Clay Geyer are preparing their equipment and fields for the crucial months ahead.

From conducting preventative maintenance on harvest machinery to organizing the farm’s layout, Geyer is planning for a successful season.

Despite the challenges posed by unpredictable weather, equipment upkeep and fluctuating market prices, Geyer remains optimistic about the upcoming harvest.

He shared an update with AgriNews.

Q: What are you up to this time of the year?

A: Preventative maintenance on harvest equipment, preparing ear corn crib for the new 2024 crop, shuffling equipment around and piecing the puzzle between sheds to hopefully gain enough space for our equipment plus the addition of a combine and headers; meanwhile, we are parting ways with some old farm equipment in classified ads and consigning it to farm auctions.

Finished my fourth cutting two weeks before Labor Day. Plan to take a fifth and final cutting in mid-September.

Q: How are preparations coming for the corn husking competition?

A: September is a busy month. We have already started checking things off our to-do list as we prepare for contest day on Oct. 5. I’ve been preparing for this state contest for over the last 12 years. I have almost got everything down to a science by now.

If only we could control the weather on contest day. We pray that contest day is rain-free and just cool enough to create a pleasant day for huskers and spectators in attendance.

The lack of rainfall and extreme triple-digit heat leading up to Labor Day should have helped prepare the contest corn, so it is ready well in advance to harvest by hand.

Q: How do you field conditions look? Any insect or disease pressure?

A: The only insects I’ve seen and felt are mosquitoes in the evening hours, but we have been blessed with thousands of dragonflies each evening that seem to be snatching them up right and left.

Corn silage, seed corn and tomato harvest is well underway in northern Indiana. My early group two soybeans are starting to turn yellow and drop leaves. My corn is starting to fire up, as well.

I discovered there was very little moisture in the topsoil when I was using the 7-shank conser-till to chisel and bury wheat stubbles and an unwanted growth of weeds as I want to plant cover crops this fall.

Q: Any yield expectations or predictions as of yet?

A: Corn is standing quite well. We did not have the extensive flooding in low pockets like others had in communities around us this summer. But with that being said — harvest isn’t here yet, either.

I expect yields to be just as good as last year, but we will know more once we start rolling with the combine.

Q: What are some of the challenges that you and other farmers face during the harvest season?

A: Weather, low commodity prices, unplanned equipment breakdowns, expensive dealership machinery and parts, lack of grain storage, long lines of the grain terminal, extra farm labor help and falling prices of used equipment at auction.

Q: What is something you love about harvest?

A: Reaping the rewards of each bushel not only for ourselves, but knowing how much one bushel of grain can benefit others. Capturing the glimpse of the first crowning of yellow corn and the grain tank without spilling it onto the combine cab.

The sounds of soybeans rattling into the grain tank and bouncing off the glass window behind the operator’s seat in the combine.

The smell of the corn fodder as the sun slowly burns and melts the frost off of the corn plants in the cool crisp morning air.

Q: Has this year been different weather-wise than the past few years? If so, how?

A: Yes. Every year it seems to get increasingly more difficult to make dry hay, but, thankfully, we have the option to wrap it if need be. But we all want dry hay when possible.

Thankfully, we haven’t had a repeat year of the Canadian wildfire smoke this year, but now we are encountering the foggy mornings and hopefully the cooler days ahead as we begin the moth of September.

We just finished our second episode of triple-digit heat indexes this summer and with very little precipitation, but we did receive an inch of rain Aug. 26, so, hopefully, that will give the thirsty plants some reprieve from the lack of rainfall over the last couple weeks.

Farmers with irrigation have continued to shoot water for weeks on end, and even after an inch of rain I suspect that irrigation units will continue to spin.

Q: What kind of weather will help finish off this year’s crop?

A: A steady warm rain at this point would not only benefit the late plantings of corn and soybeans, but a good shot of steady rain would help promote and stimulate growth on the last cutting of hay by activating the foliar and granular fertilizer that was applied the week after we baled the previous cutting.

Q: Outside of farming, what else have you been up to for the past couple weeks?

A: If I wasn’t already overloaded with commitments from other organizations, I almost entertained the invitations of two friends that suggested my name for a board position in my district for the Indiana Corn Marketing Council.

If it wasn’t for already holding two board positions of president of Indiana Corn Husking Association and vice president of the National Corn Husking Association, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to share the information of these two historical organizations with the Indiana Corn Marketing Council, too.

Q: Anything else you’d like to mention?

A: Promotional events for Indiana Corn Husking Association include:

• Rentown Old-fashion Days — Sept. 6-7, Marshall County.

• Nappanee Power From the Past — Sept. 20-21, Elkhart County.

• Northern Indiana Historical Power From the Past — Sept. 27-29, Porter County Sunset Hill Farm Park.

• Indiana State Hand Corn Husking Contest — Oct. 5, Elkhart County-B&A Reed Farms, Nappanee.