Harvest non-update...
Posting will be rare while we abandon previous meticulous plans for our harvest. 75% of beans are still in the field - targeting for this sunny stretch this week. But the real puzzler is what to do with 90% of the corn which varies from 24-35%.
I don' think we're going to lose more than 2-3 points additional in the field, and we have a 25 year-old 5-7000 bushel Shivvers setup to dry with. Only some of the corn is IP and some non-GMO. Segregation headache! Elevators will soon be full of wet corn that they will be drying - or very slow, and all of our contracts are for Jan-May delivery.
Final straw: our High Amylose contracts cannot be delivered above 15%.
So....we're flexing our strategy to get corn out of the fields, dried to barely adequate moisture content for storage until Jan-Feb, and then start secondary drying as we free up bin room.
Yields are all over the place from 160 to 220 on successive passes. Tests weights are disappointing at 54# but that's at 24% so it will climb some.
This situation calls for full attention, obviously so don't expect in long, prolix, multi-linked commentary for a while.
Thanks for reading.
4 comments:
Good luck with your harvest John. It sounds more complicated this year
FWIW, test weights around here are not climbing with drying....hope things are different for you...best of luck John
I don't want to be a wet blanket, but my experience with many falls like this in upstate NY is that anon 2 is right. In general tw does not increase. But, your plan to only partially dry this fall is one of the very best ways to preserve/improve tw. This I have learned also from experience. When the air is cool and dry (<50% rh) let the aeration fans run. This will dry the corn in the bottom of the bin and keep the corn in the top in condition until you can remove it to finish drying.
I'll also be busy this week with harvest as my current progress is behind yours. Good luck men.
all:
Thanks for your comments - regardless of the grisly truth we seem to be facing.
One other note: the variability in our fields (corn) is even more pronounced than last year. I realize wet years are our bane, but 2009 reinforces my understanding I am in the energy business - not the water business.
We didn't get enough BTU's, IMHO.
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