By a show of hands, how many of you have the nicest 2021 cover crop of volunteer soybeans or corn from each of your harvested fields, or especially in a swath directly behind your combine? Some have tried to bury or incorporate their soybean or corn seedlings with a disk or chisel plow, but the powerful seeds continue to grow and green back up! One thing is for sure, it will give your landlords or neighbors something to talk about.
Sometimes driving too fast or not making the appropriate settings on the combine will lead to a trail of evidence left behind. Prior to all the rain we have received lately, the moisture of the soybeans was exceptionally low, which caused quite a bit of grain loss when the soybeans shattered on the grain table of the combine. The corn plant, on the other hand, may have snapped off in a windstorm or had stalk issues due to tar spot. That may have caused the corn fodder to deteriorate quickly and make harvest difficult.
The on-and-off rain showers have forced many farmers to focus their attention on corn instead of soybeans. On Oct. 10, a nearby neighbor and friend, Ryan Maenhout, offered to help me out and shell some of my corn while he waited for his grain dryer to catch up. We had a bearing go out on the clean grain auger of our picker-sheller, and we had loaned our backup picker-sheller out to a friend that weekend so he could get his corn picked before the next storm hit.
Why does the wind always pick up when you have plans of setting up the ear corn elevator or the auger to a bin? The early morning forecast on Oct. 11 mentioned winds could intensify throughout the day and gust between 15 to 20 mph out of the southwest, with damaging winds as the main threat after 6 p.m. We started the day at 5:30 in the morning, I knew if we didn't push to finish picking corn that day, it would most likely be flat the following day. I started my day by adding a few turnbuckles and braces to the inside of the wooden corn crib before it could be filled.
Since the sun was a couple hours away from coming up, this gave me some time to grease the New Idea 324 ear picker, and gather some native lumber and a circular saw to cut individual boards for the doorway on each end of the wooden crib. We had removed the center fill lid on the roof of the crib the night before, so all we had to do was line the elevator up to the center hole in the crib. So, with the help of the pole light on the silo, and the lights on two tractors and the skid loader, we managed to get the elevator set up to unload all the wagons that we had filled the night before.
I still have soybeans to cut and wheat to plant. Make sure you keep an eye out for the second wave of armyworms. They are back and they love the tender hay plants and the new stands of soft, red winter wheat!