2011 Crop Year
Harvest Season
Week Ending October 29th
We have made good progress harvesting corn in the Yorkville/Plainfield area over the past couple of weeks. Corn yields are highly variable in this area depending on how different fields took the heavy rains this spring. Many low areas of the fields have good stands of corn, but the corn lacked good root development because of the excessive spring rains.
We continue to haul a lot of corn to Corn Products in Chicago. Strong basis levels have encouraged us to haul more corn to market during the fall than we normally would. This has put some strain on our trucking capacity since we are trying to haul from the field to the farm and from the farm to the market at the same time.
The tillage crew finished up tillage work in Farmer City today, and we will be getting back in tillage around the home area this coming week. They are running two rippers and are doing a great job, as usual.
Below are some photos from the week and a video from the top of the grain setup watching the combine run.
Week Ending October 15th
We continued to make good harvest progress in the Farmer City area. Corn-on-corn yields continue to be highly variable and disappointing compared to the rotated corn to soybean ground. It appears that the early wet and late dry conditions in the growing season were hardest on the corn on corn fields.
Birky's Custom Harvesting cut our soybeans this week. Yields on our soybeans were very. Field averages were 70 bushels per acre +. In hindsight, we wish we had planted more soybeans, but this spring, it appeared that corn would be more profitable. We will likely be planting a few more beans next year.
The tillage crew is keeping up working down the stalks behind the combine. Dry soil conditions are making the ground work up well.
Below are some photos of this week’s work.
Week Ending October 8th
We made good corn harvest progress in the Farmer City area this week, averaging over 200 acres per day. We had good weather all week. We are now in corn on corn ground which is yielding less than our corn on soybean ground. A combination of added stress on the crop from last year's corn residue and the fact that the corn on soybean ground was side-dressed with nitrogen are the main factors causing the lower yields on the corn on corn. Corn-on-corn fields are averaging 140 to 200 bushels per acre. The main drivers of yield appear to be drainage, soil types, and nitrogen management. Heavy rains early in the growing season tended to have more of a negative impact on yields than the lack of rain later in the year.
We had some visitors to the field this week. Kelli, Vincent, and Joel came down to ride with us on Monday. Sarah, Kristine, Karoline, and Keith came down on Saturday.
Below are some pictures and videos from the week.
Week Ending October 1st
The week started out wet, with 3.5 inches of rain in Yorkville and 1 inch in Farmer City. Luckily, we were ready to move to Farmer City by early in the week and stay out of the soaked fields in the north.
We moved machines down on Monday and Tuesday. We started harvesting corn at Farmer City on Wednesday, September 28th. Corn moisture levels have been running 18-24% so far. That corn was planted in April.
Yields have been better than we expected so far in the Farmer City area. Field averages have been over 200 bushels per acre. All of the corn we have done so far was corn after soybeans. We will see how the corn after corn did next week.
We are hauling some of the corn to local elevators and some to Corn Products in Chicago. It is a 5-hour round trip to Chicago, but there is a good bid there that covers the trucking cost. The trucks are keeping up well, and we can keep the combine running full tilt all day.
Now that we can run hard in relatively dry corn, we have been getting over 200 acres through the machine each day. Throughput in the combine has been running 5000-6000 bushels per hour.
Below are some pictures from the week.
Week Ending September 24th
We harvested corn around the Yorkville area most of the week. We have September corn contracts to get delivered into Chicago by the end of September. We were able to get nearly all of the contracted corn delivered by Saturday, September 24th.
Corn moisture levels remained high this week. Most of the corn we picked was in the 27 to 33% range. This is higher moisture levels than we would normally run, but we needed to get corn in for the early contracts. We we able to blend some dry old crop corn with the new wet corn to meet the customer’s needs of 25% or less moisture levels.
Yields from the fields harvested so far have been highly variable depending on corn hybrid and field conditions this summer. Poorly drained fields have taken the biggest yield hits. The heavy rains that came in June hurt these fields, and the corn never really recovered. Field averages so far have ranged from 150 to 190 bushels per acre.
Now that our early corn contracts have been filled, we will be moving south to Farmer City to work on the drier corn there. Hand-shelled samples show moisture levels of less than 20% there.
Below are some pictures and videos of this week’s work.
Week Ending September 10th
The 2011 harvest season started for us this week. We started near home to make sure the machines were working well before we got too far away from the shop. Corn moisture levels remain high (>30%). We hope to find some drier corn to run in next week. We have some mid-September corn contracts to be delivered out of the Yorkville area, so we are hoping to be able to run around home first for a while and then move down to the Farmer City farms later.
We are running a new combine this fall. It is a Claas / Lexion 760. It is the same model we ran last year for the Claas photo shot. It has a similar capacity to the Lexion 595 we traded in but has a new, improved cab, hydraulic system, track undercarriage, and other features. We are running a Trimble Autopilot and Trimble yield monitor on it. We have not tested it out too hard yet.
Below are some pictures of the machines ready to go for fall. As shown in the field pictures, the corn is a little green yet.
Spring & Summer Work
Week Ending August 20th
We had our annual appreciation dinner on the farm this week. We enjoyed a great evening with all the families we do business with. We are grateful for all the people who help make our farm successful by entrusting us to farm their land, supplying us with inputs, buying our grain, or otherwise supporting our business.
I received a nice drawing of our machines from one of our young landowners, Andy Rousonelos III. That drawing is posted below. We are honored to be able to farm for three generations of the Rousonelos family. Andy, his Dad, and Grandfather were all able to join us for dinner. Andy is as enthusiastic about farming as we are.
The dinner was catered by Fay's BBQ, who cooked a great meal as always.
We were busy most of the week before the party getting things cleaned up and ready for the event. The annual dinner gives us a good reason to get everything cleaned up and ready for harvest.
Also noteworthy this week was the filming of the new Superman movie in the area. Scenes from the movie are being shot just down the road from the farm and in the sky over the farm. A helicopter was filming the corn landscape in some of our fields this week.
We have been doing some yield checks on the corn. The yield estimates are disappointing in the Farmer City area. The excessive heat and dryness over the last month cut yields substantially. Our current estimates put the crop yield around 140-150 bushels per acre which would be well under our 200+ goal.
Week Ending August 6
We finished spraying fungicide on corn this week. Major field operations are finally done for the spring and summer. We have been out in the fields doing some type of fieldwork nearly every week since April. It will be good to have a little break before harvest starts.
Soil moisture levels remain good in the north but dry near Farmer City. Yields are expected to be highly variable again this year based on areas that got too much rain early in the year and areas that missed rains late in the year. Excessive heat during pollination has also hurt the yield prospects.
Below are some pictures of the fungicide applications made this week. Efren and Brad made good time and got over all the corn during the narrow application window, which is tassel to brown silk.
Week Ending July 30th
This week was spent applying fungicide on corn in the north, mowing ditches, and putting together a new ripper. We bought a CaseIH 22ft disk/ripper to use this fall. We are putting it together ourselves to save on the cost and because we like a challenge. It actually went together fairly well.
Keith enjoyed riding along mowing roadside ditches this week. However, he determined that his buddy seat was too close to the side window, as he knocked his head once or twice as we hit some holes.
Below are some pictures from the week.
Week Ending July 24th
We finished up spraying fungicide and foliar fertilizer on corn and beans in the Farmer City area this week. Crops there remain in good condition despite the nearly 100-degree temperatures. The pictures below are where the corn looks good in Farmer City.
Corn in the Yorkville area started looking tough this week as a lack of rain and record heat took their toll. Pictures below show the corn rolling up and starting to fire on the bottoms of the stalks in high areas in the fields.
We were blessed with a much-needed rain in the Yorkville area on Saturday and Sunday of this week. Over 3 inches of rain fell.
The girls did some horse showing this week near Rantoul, IL. Kristine (13) and Karoline (10) had a good time despite the heat. Keith (7) helped on the farm this week, where he insisted on wearing his boots tied together.
Week Ending July 17th
We enjoyed having a group from Prairie Farmer magazine visit the farm this week. The group toured several farms in the area to learn more about farming practices and the issues the farmers face.
Corn in the Yorkville area is starting to show signs of heat stress in the afternoons. Pollination will start this week in this area. Silks are just emerging. Hopefully, we can get rain soon.
Week Ending July 9th
The crops are looking good this week as the fields finally dried out from the excessive rains in June. We spent time this week building horse fence and getting yard work caught up. The corn easily made knee-high by the 4th of July despite the slow start this year. Keith shows us how tall the corn was this week in the picture below as Kristine and Efren spread mulch.
Week Ending July 2nd
We planted in some of the last wet spots with soybeans this week. The wet holes in the Yorkville area that were lost to the earlier heavy rains finally dried out enough to replant. These holes were all in corn fields, but it is too late to plant corn, so we planted in some beans, which will hopefully mature before the frost comes this fall. It will be good to finally be able to clean up the planters and put them away for the season. The planting and replanting season was drug out for 3 months this year. Last year we were all done in the month of April.
Karoline (10) got a chance to try driving the 15ft mower this week. Although she is not quite ready for a combine, she is getting there.
Week Ending June 18th
Wet conditions continue to hurt the crop in the Yorkville area. Most of the corn is OK, but the low areas are yellowing from too much moisture. The drowned-out areas remained too wet to replant this week. We will have to switch these areas to soybeans.
We started some summer building projects this week. We are putting in some hopper bottom load-out bins in our grain facility to load trucks.
We took some equipment to Prairie Fest in Oswego to teach kids about farm equipment. We had over 100 kids go through the combine and tractor exhibit.
Keith (7) got to run a mower this week on his own. He did a good job. He should be ready for a tractor by fall. Maybe.
Week Ending June 11th
Heavy rains hit the Yorkville area on June 8th. We had over 5 inches of rain overnight. On the morning after the big rains, we had water flowing over many of the fields. Some roads were closed. Ponds remained in the low areas of the fields by the end of the week. We will have some replanting to do again. Some of the same areas we had replanted once before earlier in the week. Despite all the rain, the crops still look pretty good, and we are fortunate compared to many areas in the Midwest that still do not have their crops in.
We spent the second half of the week replanting holes, spraying, mowing, and side-dressing nitrogen in the Farmer City area. The heavy rains missed that area. We wrapped up side-dressing on Saturday, June 11. Spraying should be wrapped up in the Farmer City area early next week.
Below are some photos from the week, including the flooded valley at the home farm.
Week Ending June 5th
This week we started applying nitrogen fertilizer to the growing corn. Only a few fields needed a side-dress application of liquid nitrogen to get the balance of the nitrogen levels that we wanted to apply. The rest of the fields had enough nitrogen applied pre-plant and at planting.
We also started applying Round-Up herbicide to all the corn to catch the early weeds. The corn is growing fast enough, and the weed pressure is low enough that we should only have to make a single application.
We have some corn to replant in low areas that were flooded out in the recent rains. The drowned-out areas are small. Hopefully, those areas get dried out enough this week to plant. The later planted corn was hit worse by the heavy rains. The larger early corn seemed to take the excessive water better.
Below are some pictures from the week.
Report for Tuesday, May 24th
We finished planting today. It was a good news/bad news kind of day. The good news was that we finished planting, but the bad news was that the sprayer got stuck in the mud the night before. Once we finished planting, we focused on the recovery of the sprayer.
The pictures below show how badly the sprayer was stuck. It started out only being down in the mud about 1 foot. Previous efforts to pull it out made it worse. The peat/muck soil where it was stuck has no bottom once you break through the topsoil. When we tried to dig out behind the machine and pull it out the night before, the machine went down to the frame, which meant we were now 6 feet down. We decided the best method for getting the sprayer out would be to pick the front end up with a crane. We placed wood mats on the ground to stabilize the crane. With a tractor pulling the sprayer backward at the same time, we were able to lift the sprayer up and out of its hole. There were some stressful moments, but it all turned out OK in the end.
Below are some pictures and videos of this weeks planting and sprayer-pulling excitement. The last picture of young Vincent riding along in the planter sums up the spring for many of us. We are a little tired and ready for a nap.
Week Ending May 14th
The early part of the week was still too wet to run. Cool conditions slowed down the drying process. By mid-week, we were able to run again in Farmer City. We ran hard when we could. The tillage crew ran 24 hours per day late in the week. We finished planting both our corn and soybeans in the Farmer City area by Friday, May 20th. We had to replant some of the low spots in the early planted corn that was drowned out by the heavy rains.
We switched several fields where we had planned on planting soybeans to corn. Corn is currently showing a better profit potential per acre, and we are much more efficient at both planting and harvesting corn. We ended up having just one field of soybeans. The soybean field helped allow a neighboring farmer to grow seed corn this year, and it may allow us to grow seed corn on this field next year. Seed companies typically want to plant seed corn on fields that had soybeans the previous year to reduce the potential contamination from volunteer corn. We have one field of seed corn this year.
The spraying crew was able to make good time this week in Farmer City. They also finished up on Friday.
We moved all the machines home on Saturday, May 21st, and we started planting our remaining fields up that way by Saturday afternoon.
Below are some pictures from the week.
Week Ending May 14th
We made good planting progress in both the north and south farms this week. Field conditions were fit for planting around Yorkville and Farmer City early in the week, so we ran planting crews in both locations for most of the week. We would rather run all of the machines together to keep the support operations more efficient, but when conditions are fit to go, we did not want to waste valuable time moving machines down the road.
The Yorkville crew was able to run Sunday through Wednesday before getting rained out. We then moved that planter south to Farmer City, where it was still dry. Both planters ran in Farmer City until Friday night when we were rained out. While it would have been good to keep going on planting, the rain did allow us to catch up on some rest. Our hard-working tillage crew had been running 24 hours per day and really needed a break.
Brad was able to get started on spraying this week. He is busy trying to catch up with the planters and stay ahead of the emerging corn. He is spraying Harness Extra herbicide with 32% nitrogen in solution. The nitrogen is the second of several applications of nitrogen that the corn will get through the year.
Below are some photos of the week, including one of young Vincent starting to crop scout the "baby corn."
Week Ending May 7th
We were finally able to get in the fields around Yorkville mid-week. We ran with one planter and cultivator in the north and left the other machines in the south, waiting on dryer conditions there. We are much more efficient when we get all the machines running together, but we were hesitant about moving machines in either direction with the threat of rain in both areas.
Field conditions remained wet in Farmer City, delaying any further planting activities there.
Below are some photos of the fieldwork from the week. Keith (7) determined that harvesting corn is much more exciting than planting corn.
Week Ending April 30th
Another rainy week. Field conditions remained too wet to do any field work. Last year we finished planting both corn and soybeans before May 1. This year the wet conditions have delayed our progress significantly.
We have kept busy working on some shop projects that would have usually been put off until summer. However, we are getting a little stir-crazy waiting on the weather to break.
We picked up some new grain trailers from the Timpte plant in Davis City, Nebraska, this week. Normally this would not be the best time of year for us to run to Nebraska to pick up trailers, but with the rain, we decided to make a little trip out of it. The new trailers replaced some of the trailers we sold this winter. While in Nebraska, we toured the Timpte trailer manufacturing plant in David City and the Claas/Lexion combine factory in Omaha.
We enjoyed our visit with the great people at the Claas facility, and we got to see how our combines are built. It was very impressive to see all the work that goes into building the combines. We also got to preview some of the Claas combine promotional videos that we were a part of last fall.
Below are some photos of the new trailers at the stop in Omaha at the Claas plant.
Week Ending April 23rd
Heavy rains kept us out of the fields again this week. Over 4 inches of rain fell for the week in Farmer City. A string of cold and cloudy days has kept things from drying out much. We have some standing water in the fields, but surprisingly, the pond areas are not very large. Machines will remain parked for a while yet.
Some of our early planted corn is now just out of the ground. It took about 2 weeks to emerge, which is about what we would expect given the cool conditions. In normal conditions, we would expect the corn to emerge in 7 to 10 days.
Below are some pictures of this week's field conditions, including some of the early corn that is just poking out of the ground.
Week Ending April 16th
Another stretch of cool/wet weather kept us out of the field most of the week. We were able to plant corn on Thursday in Farmer City. The fields were dry, but temperatures were cool, and the weather forecast was for more cool/wet conditions, so we were hesitant about planting a lot of corn. We were rained out again on Friday.
We are running two planters this year: a 24-row CaseIH 1250 and a 36-row CaseIH 1260. Both planters are equipped with bulk fill, automatic row shut-offs, and variable rate seed drives. We run both without markers, relying on the GPS steering on the tractors for guidance. The 24-row is being pulled by an MT765B Cat Challenger, and the 36-row is being pulled by an MT865B Cat Challenger.
We are again running two 60-foot field cultivators, each being pulled by Challenger MT875s. The tillage tractors are also running autosteering. We used controlled traffic patterns in the fields so that the tillage tractors stayed off the area where the corn rows would be planted. Each machine is pre-programmed with A-B lines that guide them through the fields.
With the rain delays, we have been spending more time in the machine shop modifying equipment and making sure we have everything in order when the weather gets better. This week we set up the 36-row planter to apply liquid fertilizer and liquid insecticide. We will be applying both products in-furrow with the seed. Getting the machine set up turned out to be a little work, but it should work well. Below are some photos of the set-up on the planter.
Hopefully, the weather will straighten out, and we can start making real progress in the fields. I asked our "Chief Meteorologist" (son Keith) what the weather would be like this week, and this was his response below.
Week Ending April 10th
We started planting corn in Farmer City on April 7th. Field conditions were nice and dry, but temperatures were still a little cold, so we are not in a big hurry yet. Rain came in the night of April 10th and shut us down. Light rain over the next couple of days kept us out of the field until the end of the week.
It was useful to get into the fields and at least get a little fieldwork done so that we could test out the machinery and see what still needed tuning up. Most things should be in order now to run when conditions get fit again.
We are currently just running one of the planters in Farmer City. The other one is still in Yorkville. We have held off on taking them both to Farmer City until we are certain the Farmer City fieldwork will go first. We did not want to get everything positioned in Farmer City just to get rained out and have to move it back home.
We are running a 24-row CaseIH 1250 planter and a 36-row CaseIH 1260 planter this year. The 36-row will be outfitted with liquid fertilizer and insecticide.
A video of some of the first corn planted is below.
Moving Machines to Farmer City
Week Ending April 1
We spent some time this week cleaning out old fence lines and taking out old building foundations. We were fortunate to borrow an excavator and off-road truck from KR&G Excavating to make the work easier. Below are some pictures of the work.
