Harvest on pace for early finish

AgriNews will follow the Rahn family throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmers and the decisions they make on their farm.

MOUNT CARROLL, Ill. — Harvest is on pace for the Rahn family to finish earlier in 2024 than they have in many years.

“We’re about two-thirds done with corn and we will be wrapping it up in about two weeks,” said Elmer Rahn, who farms with his wife, Annette, and their sons, Correy and Mitchel, and their families.

“It’s probably over 20 years that we’ve had a fall where we harvested every day,” Elmer said. “We finished beans last week and they got dry quick. Ours were down to 9% moisture.”

Soybean yields for the northern Illinois farmers were below their five-year average.

“Generally, with a warm, dry fall, our beans do well, but our spring was wet and we had some planting delays,” Elmer said.

“This field is 111-day corn and it is at 238 bushels and 20% moisture,” he said. “Our corn yields will probably average from 230 to 240 bushels and we’ll have some fields better than that and other fields less than that.”

The corn yields are good, Elmer said, but it probably won’t be their best crop.

“It got too dry to finish it out,” he said. “I’m not complaining, but every year you want to hit a home run.”

They had some fields of corn at 17% to 18% moisture.

“So, we have the dryer slowed down, which saves on gas and helps with the test weight,” Elmer said. “The grain quality is perfect, hard kernels and not a lot of fines, which is going to make storing corn easier.”

Although the dry weather has resulted in a fast harvest, Elmer said, it is not good for anhydrous applications.

“Anhydrous needs to attract to moisture or it will leach away,” he said. “So, we won’t be able to put anhydrous on if we don’t get rain.”

Cornstalk Bales

The dry fall has also resulted in great conditions for making cornstalk bales.

“I’ve made 1,100 bales so far and I hope to be closer to 1,200 to 1,300 by the end of the day,” Mitchel said. “You couldn’t ask for a nicer fall to make bales.”

Instead of taking all the stalks, Mitchel said, they skip every two rows when raking them, since this field is not next to their feedyard.

“The plants were healthy with all the rain we got this year so there’s lots to rake and bale,” Mitchel said. “And wherever we take cornstalks off, we put manure back on there.”

“Last year, I baled over half again more acres to get the bales we needed,” he said. “I’m doing about a bale every minute and last year I probably did a bale every 2.5 minutes.”

Finishing cornstalk baling is important as it gets closer to November.

“The days get shorter, and instead of baling for five to six hours, I can only bale for two to three hours,” Mitchel said.

“Today, we didn’t start raking until noon because with the cold weather there was a pretty heavy dew,” he said.

All the cornstalk bales are net wrapped.

“We’re also white wrapping 300 to 400 bales this year so we have good bales to feed in the spring,” Mitchel said. “We grind grass bales with our stalks to feed to our cattle.”

Soil Sampling

The Rahns have been grid sampling since 2012 and last year they switched to a hydraulic probe for soil sampling.

“It’s the best investment we’ve ever made because we can cover a lot of acres efficiently,” said Kellie, Correy’s wife and a Pioneer sales representative.

“With the manual probe, Annette and I would do the soil sampling,” Kellie said. “Now, one person can do it, the time is cut in half and the kids are learning how to take soil samples.”

Kellie uses a GPS handheld to locate each soil test point.

“We take six cores at a 6-inch depth to get the core sample for that point,” she said. “We’re about 50% done with soil testing and I figured the corn ground would be super hard, but it is a little more mellow than the soybean stubble.”

Since this area has not received measurable rainfall since the end of August, Kellie said, some of the soil test data may be skewed.

“We haven’t had moisture for the nutrients to go back in the soil so that is something we’ll have to analyze once we get the data back,” she said. “The pH could potentially be a little more acidic without the rain.”

Fall Tillage

Wheat and cover crops have been seeded on the Rahn farm.

“The wheat goes into bean stubble and we had to run a vertical till over it first to attempt to get a uniform depth,” Correy said. “It planted nicely and there was a little bit of moisture when we put it in.”

Residue management for the corn acres, Correy said, starts with the combine.

“We’re doing the best job we can with the chopping rolls to size the residue, but it’s so dry it’s hard to get the residue incorporated,” Correy said.

“We’re going ahead with tillage, but we’re not able to go as deep as we have in the past and we’re changing our angles to be more aggressive to manage the residue,” he said. “There is limited amount of decomposition without adequate moisture.”

The dry conditions are causing stress to the chisel plows.

“Our guys are monitoring the equipment hourly because my biggest concern is we’ll pull something in half,” Correy said. “I make sure I do a health check on the machines every two to three hours to try to avoid a catastrophe.”

For the soybean acres, Correy said, they in-line rip the headlands where there are heavy-traffic areas.

“Typically, it doesn’t warrant to in-line rip the entire field, but I’m going to try some on my fields to bust up the compaction since this is the right timing for subsoiling when the soil is dry,” he said.

Correy is wondering how this weather cycle will average out.

“Usually, the rainfall amount averages out over 16 to 18 months,” Kellie said.