Harvest

Reaping the Harvest

Reaping the Harvest; what started months prior, with soil sampling, seed selection, planting, fertilizing, spraying, and praying for rain, climaxing with gathering the crop that we worked so hard to produce.

Operations Corn

We operate two combines and two grain carts in the field. Unloading on the go from the combines to the grain cart, creating optimum efficiency. Our truck lineup will vary, depending on distance to the elevator and the yield of the crop. Three to four semi’s are usually sufficient to keep the combines moving forward. However, we started utilizing grain bags at the edge of the field for storage in many instances when it is acceptable to get a weight later.

Some share crop farms we still take to the elevator right away. By using these bags, it eliminates the use of trucks until months later when we get the grain back out of them. Each bag will hold approximately 12,000 bushels and requires a special machine to load and another to unload these bags.

Operations Wheat

For wheat we use shelbourne headers to leave as much stubble standing as possible. Stripper header harvested stubble provides more moisture conserving benefits than conventionally harvested stubble.

Research has found that the stripped wheat stubble reflects heat, reducing evaporation. It also increases water infiltration, traps snow and, ultimately, increases soil water storage furthering the reduction of evaporation. With only 20 inches annual moisture, we have to do everything we can to preserve moisture. The value of one inch of stored water can equal an average of 25 additional dollars per acre, depending on the crop. The result of moisture conservation is usually quite evident the first week of May, when corn planting begins, continuing through the heat of August, keeping moisture in the ground under that blanket of straw.

Technology & Data

The grain cart operators monitor the scales which is on an ipad, which can also be viewed from the combine via bluetooth to the iphone. Each load is recorded on each field and a summary can be emailed back to the office for printing. The second cart we run in fall crops keep a written record which is added to the electronic record after each field is completed. This final summary includes cart scales weight, time loaded, field, gps location, and elevator account number. This helps keep everything straight when checking ticket errors by totaling loads for each field.

Every morning before the crew gets rolling every ticket from the day before is checked with the cart print out and entered on a field worksheet. The tickets from each field is then attached and filed for future reference. At the end of harvest, data from the combines can be downloaded and printed for the file as well which includes yield from every portion of the field. This data is important to the landlords and the insurance agent who keeps a record of average yield history.

Insurance

We carry Federal Crop Insurance and report our yields after each harvest to calculate into a running average for each field. The price of insurance depends on the level we choose. We typically use a 70% – 75% level, picking the point of “Best bang for our buck”. In the event of a loss, the insurance price (obtained from a futures average during the month of harvest) will be multiplied by the coverage percent of our proven yield developed from each year. It is very important to maintain good yield averages.

[slideshow_deploy id=’172′]

Wheat Harvest 2022

Wheat harvest has been good the last couple of years. This year set some new challenges with lack of rain and then a late season hail storm. Price is very good at the expense of global unrest. This often happens when there is not as much to sell. Our whole farm average of 52 bushels per acre is a reflection of the challenges we faced. This was a 30 bushel reduction from last year. We did apply a fungicide again at flag leaf stage that undoubtedly helped our yields and is becoming part of our normal practice. It was hard to determine which variety performed the best between Ruth, Monument, and Lynk.

Whole farm average was 52 bushels per acre.
Test weights ranged from 58 to 64 pounds per bushel.
Grain moisture content averaged around 10.5%.
The highest yield was 75 bushels per acre.
The lowest yield was 15 bushels per acre (worst hailed area)
The stubble left for ecofallow is short and thin.

Corn Harvest 2022

This year we began planting with a low profile of moisture. Planting went well but emergence was fair. Moisture come towards the end of planting. We never would have imagined that would be about the only rain on this crop. Harvest went quickly with low yields and grain drying down adequately. Our whole farm average was 39 bushels per acre on dryland and 190 on irrigated. This ended up the poorest harvest yield since I started farming. Harvest was completed in late October.

Test weights ranged from 61 to 63 pounds per bushel.
Grain moisture content averaged around 12.5%.
The dryland corn averaged 39 bushels per acre.
The highest dryland yield was 75 bushels per acre.
The lowest dryland yield was 5 bushels per acre.
The irrigated yield was 190 bu/A.

Phil Bamesberger Home Page