The heat is drying stuff down. I?m not a fan of working in it but it is helping out the crop. We started shelling corn on Saturday and we?re just getting a good start on it. The moisture is running 19.5% to around 22% or 23% and it is pretty variable. This was the first field of corn we planted. It was 111-day corn and it was not bad on the moisture. Yields are pretty good so far on 60 or 70 acres. It was a low of 150 or so on the clay knolls and in the good dirt it got up to 250 or 260 bushels. That wide range is not too uncommon on some of our ground. You go from good black dirt to a clay knob. In a lower yielding year it is not that dramatic. The 150 bushels on the clay knobs is really pretty impressive.
The dryer is running well and we got the bugs worked out. We most generally shell a little corn first and switch over to running beans. We?re going to switch over and start cutting some of our Plenish beans later today. It is amazing how quickly these soybeans have turned.
This is going to be kind of a weird fall. It will be like the spring. A lot of the early corn will come off soon, but the later corn is still around 30% moisture. This heat has really helped turn the beans and I think we?ll have a good run. The majority of our Plenish beans should be ready to run by the end of the week. Some of the Plenish fields will have wheat on them, so we can get going on that. We have until the end of November to haul them in.
We?re going to be about the same on wheat acres ? about the 350- or 375-acre range. The wheat acres have been down in this area and I think they will be even lower this fall. We like wheat in our rotation so we have a place to go with our hog manure and for the double-crop beans. I think we?ll have some pretty good double-crop beans this fall.
