Fall Harvest is gearing up in the US. Some places are running wide open already, while others are just getting equipment out. We chopped our corn silage the first week of September, and our soy beans are almost ready to roll. Corn always gets run after beans around here, unless making high moisture corn, then it may have to be shelled a bit earlier when the moisture is right. Here are some pics from our silage harvest. We chopped around 200 acres over 6 days. We don't get started until after 10am, and shut down around 6pm to prep equipment. Dairy business happens first, then we move on to everything else that needs to happen. I spent my time pushing up the pile, packing the pile, driving truck, or fixing trucks. I also spent every evening prepping the push tractors, our 7380 harvester, and the trucks for the next day so we would be ready to roll when we got done with chores. It was a very busy 6 days, as every day started before dawn and finished after dusk, but the weather cooperated and stayed productive every day even with 3 trucks breaking down. One truck lost a steering box and was taken to a heavy truck repair shop. Another truck had to have the starter and positive battery cable replaced. Both of these trucks were down for a day each, but didn't slow us up too much. Our third truck is still at a repair shop as it developed a bad miss when warm and loaded. They sorted out an electrical issue, and are currently waiting to hear results from injector testing.
We're a couple weeks in up here now. Wish the weather would start co-operating. We have a day or 2 of good weather, then it rains. Forecast looks good for the next week so hopefully everything dries up today and tomorrow so they can get back in the fields.
Silage done over here also. Early planted beans are dropping leaves like crazy, being hot & dry, harvest should start early. Ed
Lot's of guys been chopping sileage for a week or so around here too. Drove by a big farm yesterday the corn stubble was already covered with nectar from the brown lagoon.
A little off topic but who thought used combines would be over $1M !. These are in the local dealer flyer last week
Wrong colour anyways lol.
Green means Go!
Got into the soybeans today. Ran a field of 1.8s that were planted April 21st. Light soil, good rain, 63 bushel/acre @ 10.5% moisture. Not bad given the deer leveled the back 2-3 acres. Low spots in the field were touching upper 70s for yield. I was on grain cart detail tonight. We'll run another 100 acres tomorrow.
@terex herder , how is your harvest going?
Another beautiful day to run soybeans 4040 auger mule earning her yearly keep. We did use this tractor to drill some Alfalfa back in August when we had a couple cools days, but otherwise she doesn't so much field work anymore. Used to be our go to utility tractor, but its been supplanted by a newer, cab tractor with AC.
Lol....I saw my first combine hooking up the header at a bean field today. Ed
Drove past a tater pickin' operation yesterday, three big green tractors followed by three big tater pickers. It's been pretty dry around here lately so them big tater conveyors blowing all that dry dirt from tater hills up into the air looked the riders of the apocalypse coming through. Only beans being harvested around here so far are green beans and a whole bunch of punkins' by the side of the road.
Very busy week. Harvested around 200 acres of soybeans, harvested 50 acres of earlage, and helped truck earlage for two neighboring farms. One of the farmers has the adapter to put a snapper head on his Claas harvestor, us and another farm provided trucks. The neighbors did a really nice job cleaning up this Mack. Both of our Mack's and this one came from the same custom harvesting operation when they upgraded their fleet. Our trucks are not as sharp looking as this one. Their effort is noticed by everyone when people ask "Who has that shiny truck?" Always seems like we have to split the field when its my turn to get loaded. We started the first farm on Wednesday and finished the third farm this morning. That is one fast operation. Normal corn silage for us is chopped around 3mph. We were running 6-9mph chopping this earlage. We did around 50 acres at our farm in about 4½ hours. Part of that was moving between fields as we chopped off some smaller parcels. The neighbors put their earlage in bunk silos, we filled a 10ft diameter x 250ft long Ag Bag. This is our first year trying earlage in a dairy TMR.
On a side note: harvested the best field of beans ever off our farm. 33 acres averaged 77 bushel per acre. Outside round was about 50 bu/ac, low spots were better than 85 bu/ac.
Work hasn't slowed down any this week. Spent Monday and Tuesday going through equipment, then set up a bagger and grinder on Wednesday morning and started shelling high moisture corn for cattle feed. Corn is coming out of the field around 28% moisture, a little wetter than the hammer mill likes, but it's handling it well. Wetter HMC ferments better and makes a more digestible feed stuff. Our schedule is mostly dictated by the availability of the rental mill and bagger though. If the corn is close, run it. Been some late nights, but we should finish this evening.
Hammer mill lost a universal about 4 hours into the job on Wednesday. Made a hell of a racket when it let loose at 1000rpm. Shut us down right after all the shops closed.
Manure injection guys set up on Monday/Tuesday and started pumping our lagoon on Wednesday. They should finish today, or Monday.
At least the tractor end U-joint broke, could have been bad if the other end let loose.
It still flopped pretty good as there is a lot of inertia in the hammer mill when it is spun up to 1000rpm. The shaft spun around and hit something which snapped the shear bolt on the flywheel side. It took another minute or so for the mill to stop spinning. I happened to be in the tractor when it went and was able to kill the hydraulic augers pretty quick so we didn't fill the mill with whole corn too badly.
Guys shut down at 6pm and still had about 4ft left in the lagoon. They didn't have a very good day either. They broke their injection toolbar mid-day, snapped the frame. They left and brought back their backup tractor and toolbar only to blow a hydraulic line on the tractor before they could get back to pumping. This tool bar was 3pt mount, and their other tractor didn't have a 3pt hitch. Their motor hand said its been like this all summer. Everything they touch breaks. Get things repaired or replaced and something else lets loose. They spent the rest of their day getting the broken frame toolbar functional to top dress instead of inject. We'll have to disc it in once they're done to incorporate it.
Great photo's. What is the "manure injection"? Do you somehow pump it onto the fields as fertilizer? I would not have thought you would be able to put it through the centre pivot.
We hire a company that that runs a "manure dragline" operation. They own like 6 miles worth of 8" lay flay hose, dragline, multiple diesel powered centrifugal pumps, lagoon pumps, tractors, and "Applicator Toolbars". The gist of the system is the use of pumps and hose gets the manure out to the field where you want it injected. The toolbar pulls the dragline (abrasion resistant hose) behind it, knifing the manure into the soil. On the tool bar, they have a distribution block where the dragline connects and disperses the manure through smaller (2"?) hoses to the injection points. They vary, but each toolbar has some way of breaking the soil open (straight chisel, coulter discs, etc), depending on what residue you're injecting into. This is the most efficient way to move 3,000,000 gallons of manure out of the lagoon and into the soil. We are required by the state to incorporate the manure promptly after application, so direct injection accomplishes two tasks (spreading and incorporating) in one pass. Application rate (gallons/acre) is controlled by tractor travel speed based on readings from a flow meter at the first booster pump. The flow meter keeps track of total pumped volume and rate of flow. We get billed on total gallons pumped. We actually have two center pivots set up for applying the lagoon water. Our manure passes through a separation system prior to entering the lagoon so most of the solids have been removed, but the water soluble nutrients are still in the liquid. We can set a floating suction point and use our diesel pump to draw off the top of the lagoon and apply with the pivot during the growing season.
Me and my brother traveled to my sisters up in Iowa to help haul grain this weekend . They are cutting beans right now . It has been dry and you can tell it. We will go back home Monday but come back later to help with the corn.
How has the yield been for them? I heard parts of Indiana and Ohio are dealing with some drought stress as well, but it was late enough in the season that the yield wasn't horribly stunted.
I would never have thought it being done like that.
Really enjoy reading your posts about farming. Being a construction guy we tear stuff down and build things back, farming is a whole 'nuther ballgame that I have zero knowledge or experience of. Thanks for sharing!
Legislation forced them into existence. Our neighboring state passed legislation that farms were not able to spread manure on frozen ground. This was to reduce contamination from excess run off. This forced farms to build storage facilties large enough for several months capacity. The need for a cost efficient method to apply all that manure once the ground thawed prior to planting led to dragline injection. We had a pit under one half of our barn that the slurry got scraped into every day. This pit held 100,000 gallons or so, which meant we had to empty it every 2 weeks. We used a manure pump to suck it out of the pit and pump it into a 6,000 gallon tanker to apply. With the threat of new legislation, twelve years ago, we invested into a manure separation system to reclaim the sand and separate the manure solids from the liquids. This reduced our need for on site liquid storage, and gives us multiple options for handling and storing the solids portion. Somedays, I feel we just traded one type of labor for another.
These days it seems like this, 40 years ago it took ten people on ten machines to make a widget. These days the same widget can be made with three computerised machines which are operated by one person. But these days it requires eleven other people in roles that watch over that one person. There is the gay disabled female refugee diversity and inclusion officer that makes sure the operator is diverse and inclusive, there is the safety officer who makes sure the operator is safe, there is the environmental officer that make sure the operator is not damaging the environment (whatever that means) and so on and so on. So the widget itself takes less work to make, more people are hindering it's production so that it costs more to make, and thus soon the widget is made overseas where there is no such horseshit and the sole operator gets the sack, but the other eleven people in the government mandated roles simply move onto the next industry to force out of existence. The end game for them will be the same though, but by that stage , will be well and truly buggered.
I've always been skeptical of government regulations. This being western Washington, we get a lot of rain. I cleaned some drainage ditches on a dairy 16ish years ago and bailed a lot of liquid manure out. Well, maybe some regs aren't quite so dumb.
x.com x.com I've seen pipe cleaners but this is different.
I don't have any numbers yet but it looks like another time when they got a little rain every time they needed it bad.
Been another busy week. We cut the last 300 acres of our soybeans. Finished up Monday. I hauled the last load in to a very full co-op. Everyone is getting full early this year. We swapped out our grain platform for a Deere FD35 Flex Draper Header. I have never seen a double knife set up like this before. A wobble box on each end drives knives that are half as long. They overlap in the center of the header. Our old 35ft header had a single wobble box drive one, 35ft knife. We had good weather, but heavy dew every morning delayed our start until after lunch each day. Yields were favorable, but we ended up about a truckload short of last year's yield based on how full the last bin got. Setup the bins for drying corn and started shelling some this afternoon. We got the dryer running this afternoon only to blow a hose on the combine, putting an early end to our day.
All the 40's I used to work with were double drive. It's not fun replacing sections in the overlap, but I never broke a double drive sickle bar.
Bean harvest is in overdrive over here. If you ain't hauling beans, you ain't shrit.... Wheat going in like crazy too, beans off on the weekend, worked up and being planted today. Still seeing some high moisture corn being done also.
I had to change some sections in the overlap last Friday and found that out. Just have to carry a set of Allen keys in the toolbox now, otherwise it wasn't too bad. Not a 2 minute job though. Overall, the header worked great, but we may invest in the finger flip over kit for the reel. We had issues with one soybean variety wrapping up in the reel and had to be cut free when it happened.
Beans are running this week, and I've seen a new (to me) style bean header. Large Case IH combine looks like a center section maybe 12' wide, and then a hinged section on each side. Are these to fold for xport, or flex for ground contours ? The other was on a New Holland, looked like split in the middle.
I have not seen what you are describing. If you can get a picture, please share it here. I'm always open to learn something new. Our Draper Header is a flex model, but there are no hinge points. The cutter bar is made to flex along the ground contour. I have not seen a folding grain platform yet, but we do own an 8 row folding corn head. It has been really nice the last couple years. Put the head on once, fold up, and roll out for the season. We have a lot of 30-50 acre sized fields. The folding corn head makes it a breeze to skip between them during harvest.
Not harvest but related to it. Facebook www.facebook.com
Welker Farms on YouTube tried one out on an AF11 combine this year. They found it could cut reliably at 11mph.
I guess I didn't realize that header had pivot points in the frame. I watch a lot of their videos, my son loves seeing how they do stuff, and the Big Buds. That AF11 is a beast of a machine.
I love seeing the big iron from Australia. I think everyone that knows me has sent me that video lol. Pretty damn impressive piece of equipment.
We got the hose replaced, loaded three trucks, and blew the drive belt for the separator fan. Lost a couple hours there, but we're back shelling corn again.
We got lucky. So very lucky tonight. Due to traffic, I was slow getting back to the field after dumping at the co-op. While i was gone, they filled the grain cart (650 bushel ish) and then my uncle stopped to step out of the combine. Once outside, he caught a whiff of smoke, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and went looking. Sure enough, small fire was just starting on the feeder house. At this point, he had been shelling for about 6 hours and the dust and chaff had built up a good layer again after being cleaned off last night. He called the fire department as it was still smoking. They came and doused everything thoroughly.
Saw 1 cornfield finished today....had the chisel plow in it as I drove past. Ed
Go go go! Trucks can't keep up
Are you guys rolling the corn for your high moisture corn before packing into the bunk?
Yes, Jimmy cracked wet corn.
My friend that works our ground finished soybeans on Sat., just in time before 3 tenths of rain and more tonite. Corn on our place and its close to being ready. Ed
Cows do well on it. Finishing out some beef cows? How big is the operation?
Can you turn corn kernals alone into silage as well? Or it just being used a a sort of silo for storage. Like I saw on youtube, big as in hundreds of feet long sausage shaped plastic bags being filled with grain.
They are going to start on the corn this week so if everything goes ok I will be going back up to help. I don't mind helping but its been a busy year. I don't know everything about it but corn silage is everything from the ground up stocks and all. Other wise the stocks are just plowed under to help build the soil . A lot of farmers store grain in the bags to sell when the price is better or to keep and use latter. I often wonder what this cost to do there is more work and fuel involved ?
2 thing against using plastic bags in Oz. Galahs and Cockies, the ingenious buggers figure out a way of ripping them open. When I was down on the Riverina at my BILs they were considered part of the cost, there'd 100s of them going for their lives.
I only spent 12 mths on a ranch in Colorado and that was over 30 yrs ago, but I was told and while there , we certainly lived by it. Was that cattle won't dig through snow to find feed, if there's no food visible you have to feed them. So we spent the summer baling hay to feed during winter, I also remember several semi loads of whole ear corn delivered. We would shovel it onto the pick ups and take it out to the cattle and shovel it off again, don't know if that was a common thing or if it's still done or not. Was certainly an eye opener for a young bloke from heat of Queensland. As an aside apparently horses will dig in the snow for feed, probably why we ride hoses and not cattle, cause they're smarter.
Yes, the kernels can be ensiled. There are 4 ways that we use corn Whole plant, chopped and ensiled = Corn Silage Just the ear, cob, and husk, chopped and ensiled = Earlage Just the grain at moisture content above 20%, processed and ensiled = High Moisture Corn Just the grain, moisture under 15% = Dry corn. Ensiling can be in an upright silo, sealed bags, bunker pits, packed rollover piles, etc. The feed stuff has to have the correct moisture to ferment, and oxygen excluded to the best of your ability. We also inoculate with the proper bacteria for anaerobic fermentation to ensure that the fermentation starts as quickly as possible to reduce the opportunity for mold to grow first. Proper packing and covering is crucial for this to happen. We let our corn products ferment for 2-3 months before we open them up and start feeding. The high moisture corn provides starch in the TMR in a highly palatable and cost efficient manor. The cows milk very well on dry corn, but it comes at a much higher cost due to the need to dry the corn in our area for storage. Our harvest season is generally too cool and damp for corn to dry down naturally here. High moisture corn allows us to take corn right from the field, process it, and store it for feed with much lower input costs.
Interesting… some 205 rfv usually gets some milk in the NW.
When the feed gets too rich, we end up with lots of milk and reproductive health issues. The last time we chopped our alfalfa too soon, the cows jumped up in production right away and then started aborting pregnancies.
Should have mentioned cured… in a bale…ready for storage.
Been running hard all week. Moon is rising over the treeline. Something like 200 acres left after we finish this piece tonight, but it's all scattered around in small fields.
I'm not a Farmer, and don't like to pry my neighbor with questions - but I think he's got about 400 head and works 3000 acres. Corn and beans - finished beans last week. He's got 3 or 4 trucks all 30 years old - fully depreciated. The smart way to make money. They log 3000 miles a year. I'm his gear jammer with a smooth control touch. Nobody wants to work anymore, I"m seeing more wives driving truck, making me think drivers are getting harder to come by. The elevators prices are so variable that he can pencil out moving from distant elevator 40 miles away. .40 cents difference in price makes a difference when you're moving 1100 bushels. He sends me to five different elevators within 70 miles. Doing 15000 bushels a day. Most running 15% Some still at 19% moisture. No way I could be a farmer - too much gambling for my blood. The thing I hate most about the job, at the end of harvest - out of State pheasant hunters getting in my way on a two track or congesting up the road. I'm NOT going in the ditch or rolling over ! Up before sun rise and working past sunset. The dust makes for nice vistas. Here's some jail breaking runaways from 10 miles away on the State line road.
Our corn is coming off now, probably 10 acres left. Ed
I've been too busy to think about updating. We finished harvesting our fields on Wednesday. Our bin is plumb full and we sent many loads to the coop for storage. We started harvesting the neighbors corn today, should finish in a couple days if everything goes well. Our local elevator is full. They shipped all of their soybeans out to make room for more corn. Now they're shipping wet corn out to their sister plant because they don't have room for anymore dry corn. The next closest grain buyer shipped their beans out as well. They have a lot more storage capacity though and are still receiving grain. A lot of farms in my area finished up with harvest this week. Only the really big guys are still out running as they will be for another month yet. This is the first year I ever remember putting the combine away before November.
Yup...Tom said he canno't remember being done with beans (2 weeks ago) this early. Ed
Spreading fertilizer as I type, yes, Its dark out. What did farmers do before GPS and autosteer? Got a lot less done in a day... Ed
It's been a busy 2 months, but harvest is done. We wrapped up the custom work for the neighbor just after lunch, and everyone got to go home at 5pm today. Crazy. My kids didnt know what to think when I showed up to pick them up on time this afternoon. I even had time after parking my truck to wash and service the grain cart, and get it put away in storage for the year. Now, 4 trucks, combine, header, and a couple tractors to wash and service. Then on to winter projects for us.
Happy birthday Colson! Hope you had a day with no breakdowns!
Thank you. No equipment break downs because nothing is running, but we did have two difficult births to deal with. One breech, and the other the calf was twisted up. Both calves lived and mothers are doing well so far so that makes a good day.
So when do you start planting corn again colson?
Not before April 20th. That's our historical safe date to plant after. The last 2 years, we've had part of our soybeans planted and all of our silage corn planted the last week of April. We have appropriately sized equipment for the acerage we plant and can cover everything in about 21 days, provided we get appropriate weather. Last year we were done planting Mid May, other years its been well into June.
Almost 400 miles further north and only 10 days in the difference. Meanwhile, the guys in know in Arkansas will start this week.
Local renter was finally getting the corn off this weekend....
The ground seems different this spring . Its muddy on the top couple of inches then hard under that. There is also a lot of water standing in puddles around. I have a place to haul some scrap iron from that I have been wanting to for maybe a month and it just hasn't dried out . I am glade I am not a farmer .
Local to lake Erie, the planting season is late as that big blob of water is colder than the air. During harvest, we go later in the season as that big blob of water is warmer than the October air. You drive just south 40 miles, Titusville and area does not suffer the influence of the Lake. Colson has water on 3 sides, so I imagine the effect is even greater.
Lake-effect rain, or bay-effect rain, is the liquid equivalent of lake-effect snow , where the rising air results in a transfer of warm air and moisture from a lake into the predominant colder air, resulting in a fast buildup of clouds and rainfall downwind of the lake. Buying the beer, when you get stuck in the mud, is no fun :-(
It's pretty wild how a summer storm can explode over Lake Michigan, or absolutely dissolve when crossing the lake from Wisconsin. It goes both ways. There is also a belt along the lakeshore where climate is just right to grow peaches. Too far inland, and it becomes hit or miss whether a farm can make a profitable crop. They call is the Peach Belt, or Fruit Belt. I've heard both terms growing up in the area. Fruit Belt The property I reside at today in Cloverdale, MI, was once owned by my wife's Great, Great, great Uncle Edam, who had a peach orchard where my house sits today. After the peach trees reached their decline in production, his son ripped them out, put up fences, and imported Hereford cattle from Iowa (1940s or 1950s, nobody alive today is quite sure when that happened). The property was sold sometime in the 1960's and stayed out of the family until 2016, when it came for sale and my wife and I bought it. We found out it was part of the family history after we had entered into contract on it. My wife's great Aunt and her husband shared a lot of the history, along with one of her Great Uncles. Both of these fanilies make up my neighbors to the west. Part of the old fences are still here, but decayed with time. I've been pulling them out as they become a nuisance in certain areas.
2024
2024
Wind rows
Bean factory