Most of the farm kids, including myself, drove ourselves to drivers ed class.
The '24 Iowa Harvest thread
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Our driver’s ed instructor always asked the city kids how they got to class in the summer and chew us out if we drove ourselves. He didn’t ask the farm kids because he knew they drove.
Yields in NW Iowa are probably not going to be that good this year while many places in the state probably will see record yields. My BIL farms near the Spencer area and he was still planting beans in June this year. The crops in that area between the late planting then the flooding they got do not look good and are very behind for this time of the year. Was just up there a couple ago and while we had people already combining beans in central Iowa there were a lot of fields that still had green soybeans or barely starting to turn colors. Maybe a month or so ago while up there I noticed that around here the beans had filled in the row aisles but up there most fields you could see right down the row aisles. The corn fields look very uneven and either stunted or bare spots in the fields from ponding tooo. Lot of replant up there too because of the wet spring and summer flooding, my BIL said he had 27 acres that were too wet to plant this year that he had to put rye down for preventive planting.
I think we may be entering "new norm" territory on soybean yields similar to when we started seeing 60 bu. beans several years ago. Not trying to one up you, but the majority of the yields in southern Black Hawk and Grundy counties have fallen in the 75-80 bushel range, and yes, remarkable. Planted a week or two later than most would have liked but the rains were timely. The big rainfalls seemed to split and go north and south. For the most part we got plenty of rain but avoided the flooding. A farmer friend of mine who trucks in the off season stated around bin cleanout time that he thought some of the better (at least corn) markets next year could be in the Fort Dodge area as they suffered from the weather and were expecting very low corn yields. His normal markets have been Cedar Rapids and local ethanol plants but is bracing to truck a lot of corn west next year. Seen it several times in my lifetime that large areas suffer with low yields thus boosting prices and areas that have normal or above normal yields and greatly benefit from the price/yield combination. Here's hoping more of you fall into the latter scenario than the former and everybody has a safe harvest.
Hmm, I thought the corn around FD looks pretty good, north of 3 it drops off pretty fast with the extra rain, that S Minn corn looks really uneven because of excess rain,
My friend didn't really expound on it. He may have meant that areas that the Fort Dodge market usually services (outside of the immediate Fort Dodge area) were lacking and their needs would be supplied from farther away. We are about 60 miles from Cedar Rapids but with exception for a couple closer ethanol plants they set the tone for the markets in our area. I know he has already hauled loads to Fort Dodge in the past (90 miles) when that market had a "push bid" which would make me think that they could be affected by those acres within a hundred miles to the west and north of them for their needs.
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Finished up beans today. Averaged 75 across the scale. That’s a farm record for us.
Going to dive right into corn. Testing at 15-18% right now. Won’t have to pay much drying this year.
Going to dive right into corn. Testing at 15-18% right now. Won’t have to pay much drying this year.
This thread is sorely missing combine seat video of 250+ bu/a corn getting sucked into the feeder. At least a snapshot.
TIA.
I took the day off from work to help my dad and uncle harvest. Yield was around 247 in this field. It was nice to get away from the office desk for the day.
Wouldn’t be so bad except we’ve had record or close to record input cost.
Edit: Basically, our input cost are at the level for $4.50-5/ bu corn and $11.50-12/bu beans. So good yields are a must.
