Well?

[MarkV]

I don't farm but sure do feel sorry for the farmers in N. Illinois. I was up in the DeKalb area last weekend and there were thousands of acres of corn still in the fields. Like everywhere else this year it has been too wet to get into the fields. The locals were telling me that the corn that is coming out of the fields has a moisture content of about 35% as apposed to the normal 17% or so. The elevators will not take the corn that wet and it runs about .75 cents a bushel to dry if you can find a dyer available. One of the old time farmers was saying that after drying you are loosing money per bushel with it selling at about $3.00 per. His concern now was getting the corn out of the fields to prevent some sort of mold that can contaminate the soil in the future. You farmers have it pretty tough in my book.

MarkV

 

[D7E]

Corn has started coming off this week....Generally no one ever expects corn to come off the field dry and is pretty unheard of ...The guy who drys ours is saying it's costing obout 30-40 cents a bushell...I don't think our elevators even buy corn so all has to be stored and trucked..Mold is the issue this year and most has been written off by crop insurance and are just running foragers through it and blowing it into the air..?

 

[MFRED]

Understanding insurance payed for the crop already. Chopping & blowing on the ground, does it add any decomposition value as well? Or does it just get rid of the moldy corn?

 

[D7E]

Crop insurance is'nt quite as straightforeward as it sounds ..depending on your history and amount of cover will not cover the cost of seeding never mind the value of the crop.
All that material is beneficial for the ground but the disease and fungus that you're getting rid of is'nt exactly the best thing to be contaminating your soil with for following crops.
As ours is a very heavy crop and only just over the threshhold of 10% mold although still written off we'l still go to the expense of harvesting and drying and hope levels are low enough to find a market of some kind..

 

[scoutcub]

Steve C -

Ouch. Looks like you have been tested more than your fair share.

You did hit on one point spot on.....despite how bad you have it, it could be worse. And is for many many other folks. I work overseas in a third world country and they are fighting famine disease corruption and fighting......losing whole families, losing children to malaria and undernourishment, etc. etc. I kiss the ground every time i land back in the US and truly appreciate all we have here.

 

[WayneB]

It's been a so so year, with the spring so wet we couldn't get into the fields to cultivate. So we had some weed problems, but were able to manage them by pulling by hand.

Then the raspberries were so wet that we had a bunch of fungus on them. Cain's were good and strong, but we lost a good number of the berries.

But, in July things seemed to dry up and we were able to salvage most of the potatoes so it is just another year of, "Aiming at bulls-eye of the target"!

Now we have had a wet fall with lots of standing water, but we are into December with no snow and the weather has been very warm, so that is okay for now. Was able to mount the snowblower with little or no failures so we are somewhat ready for Olde Man Winter!

But, spring is around the corner so we will all be busy again and dreaming of what to spend the money on come next fall.......insurance? food? new equipment??

Wayne

 

[sammyd]

We had a pretty decent year.
Put up a lot of hay. Some got washed before we baled it but it turned out good enough for us.
Goat herd trebled. Have some cheap Holstein heifers growing and a couple of nice looking steers.
Made some money on our Holstein steers, lost some on the goats....oh well.
Grazed our corn off this year instead of waiting for ripe and that worked OK.
Overall pretty satisfied with how the year went.

 

[Georgia_Cattleman]

First time poster (about to post a new thread about no-till drills) but thought I'd chime in here.

It's been a pretty decent year for my operation. The hay crop was good, silage wasn't great, calving is done and we're at zero mortality right now, weaned cattle brought a good price, the open heifers we sold didn't bring as much as I'd have liked, but the bred heifers brought a nice price. Genetics (embryos and semen) business was pretty solid this year. Had a lot of weed problems because of the rain and didn't sell very much hay, but it can't all be roses.

New equipment purchases will be a no-till drill and a new fence charger, and I plan to pick up another small parcel of land.