I didn't take my camera with me when I visited the fields 14 miles away, so no photos, but 50 of the 90 acres of corn has some pretty significant hail damage from a recent storm. The leaves weren't entirely stripped from the stalks, maybe 50% (?). Ears were just starting to form on the stalks and the plants are almost ready to start tassling, a very vulnerable stage.
We'll see how it turns out.
The beans, 5 miles away, avoided the hailstorms, and look really good. Likewise the kernza and the wheat.
When first assessing a field with hail damage, it can often be
depressing and discouraging [ed. No shit ]. However, it is important to be patient when
assessing the damage and that the observed damage often looks worse
than it actually is.
The corn (Organic Viking Seed variety O.58-85P from Albert Lea Seed) was planted 33,000 seeds/acre, 2.5 inches deep, on 6/1/22.
I have a Deere 9560sts combine with a 693 corn head that has the Calmer stalk chopping rolls in it.
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The yield looks a little lower than average, around 125 bushels/acre, but I won't know total yield/acre until I get the final settlement statements from the buyer.
UPDATED to say that the statements show the corn had a test weight of 52.5 lbs/bushel and was at 20% moisture. They pay me $11 for a bushel weighing 56 pounds at 15.5% moisture. So there were deductions from the gross amount I got from the buyer, as I was selling him corn that didn't make the spec.
To give you some way to make sense of this, last year, on a different parcel, we got about 160 bushel/acre. A couple of my conventional/chemical neighbors have told me their yields were down
about 25% this year, due mostly, in their opinion, to lack of timely
rain. (The average yield reported by conventional/chemical farmers in Polk County, WI for 2021 was 159 bu/acre. I seem to remember that the average organic yield for the county was around 120 bu/acre.)
Another thing that could have affected my yield was the fact that I couldn't get last years red clover cover crop terminated soon enough. Due to heavy spring rains, the lime and turkey litter couldn't be spread into the standing clover in a timely manner, causing the tillage pass that kills the clover to be delayed until right before I planted the corn. I've been told that unless the clover is killed at least 3 weeks prior to planting the corn, the exudates (?) in the dying clover will suppress the emerging corn plants.
Some relevant numbers:
One bushel of corn weighs 56 lbs.
An acre has 43,560 square feet, the same as the area of a square 208 ft by 208 ft.
There are 2.47 acres per hectare
Using the above, the yield of 125 bushels/acre = 7.9 tonnes/hectare, if I did the math right.
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There are a few foxtail, pigweed, lambsquarters, and velvetleaf in the endrows, but overall, the weeds look under control.
I was only able to get two semi trucks a day here, as they are in high demand this time of year. Each truck trailer will hold about 1100 bushels (weighing 61,000 lbs/28,000 kg), that comes off of a little less than 8 acres (approximately 3.25 hectares) of corn, so it took a while to get the 90 odd acres harvested. Ultimately we filled 11 trailers with the corn.
I pay to have the corn delivered to the buyer, Cashton Farm Supply in Cashton, WI, about 175 miles away. All things considered (price, currently $11/bushel; distance that I have to truck it; ability to take wet corn, i.e. above 15% moisture) they are the best buyer of organic corn that I've found.
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The combine engine de-rating fault codes didn't
happen again, so we were able to get the corn all combined without too
much trouble from the combine.
Basically all three are related to high temperature sensors or actual high temps in either the coolant or the exhaust manifold.
The combine will need to be serviced by the dealer next spring/early summer, when they can hopefully figure out what is going on.
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On the last day of combining the tractor, a Case 7140, that we were using
to pull the grain cart stopped working. We think it's a problem with the fuel system. Fortunately we were able to
rent a big enough tractor from a neighbor that we could use to pull the
grain cart. The Case is still out in the field and will have to be
hauled into the dealership to get fixed. I was thinking about selling
that tractor (and replacing it with something like a Deere 8410) prior to this event and I'll pursue that further this winter.
Prior to starting combining, there was about 5" of snow on the ground that started to melt due to warm temps. By the last day of combining there were some wet spots that I had to avoid with the combine for fear of getting stuck. Because of that I had to leave a small amount of corn unharvested.
Next spring we'll work on making that equipment crossing field entrance ramp, shown in the second video, less steep. A couple loads of gravel should do the trick. Once that's done the semi's can get directly into, and more importantly, out of the field without worrying too much about getting stuck.
This is the last of the major work this season. After we were done I blew everything out with the leaf blower (residual grain in the equipment attracts rodents who chew on wires) and then drove the combine and grain cart home, just ahead of the first major snow storm of the year. I was able to get everything put away in the sheds and the doors shut just in time.
With all the repairs on the header and combine finally finished and the corn drying down, we decided to do a test run. Aside from verifying that all the new parts and repairs were meshing properly, it was a chance to set the combine up to give a clean grain sample as well as making sure it was completely chopping up the stalks and leaves.
Once I had some shelled corn I took it to the local elevator where they tested it for moisture - its at 25.4%. While the buyer, a feed mill, will use propane to dry it down to about 15% so they can use it and without spoiling, I end up paying for that drying at least two ways: the mill charges me a fee, per point of moisture removed, to get it down to 15%, and also as extra trucking to ship all that excess water down to Cashton Farm Specialties (the buyer). A good explanation of those costs and risks is here.
I'd like to have the moisture be under 20% before we start combining. That will probably take about a week of decent weather so the wind and sun can dry it down; the forecast calls for a few days of rain in the next 10 days so we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully the rain/snow will hold off for a while.
This organic corn is going to be used as animal feed. In the future we might grow for the "food grade" market, like we did with the wheat, however selling into the food market is a bit more complicated. It would require me to be able to dry the grain myself, and then store it in a dedicated grain bin after drying. The costs of building that infrastructure are fairly high, especially considering that I can sell "wet" feed corn with a minimal cost/loss of revenue.
(Click on any picture to make it bigger.)
What I've grown can be eaten by people, it just takes some work.
I've spent a fair amount of time rebuilding the corn head. I bought it, used, about 4 months ago. One of the first things we did was decide to replace the worn out stalk rolls with Calmer rolls, a fairly expensive upgrade. One of the main benefits of the new rolls is that they'll chop up the old corn stalks so that the following year there won't be so much residue that will plug up my row cultivating.
Before putting in the new rolls we stripped the head down and identified, then repaired/replaced, worn parts. We decided that the Calmer sprockets and gathering chains weren't worth the extra $1000/row. Time will tell; in the meantime we'll use what you see below.
In addition to the things I mentioned in the above video, I did (for the first time) an aluminum stick weld repair on a broken bracket. I believe that bracket, which holds the poly snouts in place where they join the tool bar, was broken as the same time when the last row unit was bent, when the previous owner ran into something (a rock?).
(Click on any image to make it bigger.)
I was happy with how the aluminum stick weld repair turned out. We'll see if it holds up after I run the combine for a while. It's not a key structural part of the head.
In front of my finger, on the left, is a nut I welded onto the broken off stub of the hex head flat drive screw that used to be in the spot where the newly installed, and silver, screw is now in place. It's just behind the new nut and slightly under the gathering chain. Prior to welding, the nut was exactly the same as the untouched nut on the right. I stick welded through the nut into the top of the broken off screw. The heat introduced by the weld helped to loosen the threads and I was able to put a wrench on the welded nut and back out the broken off screw.
I just have a few small things to adjust, and grease, and then the combine is all ready to go. The corn, approximately 100 acres that will fill about 15 semi trailers (each holding ~60,000 lbs of grain), is just about dry enough to harvest.
The weather is favorable for the next 10 days, so starting in a week we hope to be able to get it all combined and trucked down to Cashton Farm Supply over 3-4 days, where it will be ground and blended to be ultimately sold by CFS as organic chicken feed.
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When I had birds up here I would buy CFS feed in 40 lb bags at the local co-op. It costs about 10% more than the standard, Purina, chicken feed. But.... when you open a bag of each the first thing you notice is the smell - The CFS smells like freshly ground corn/polenta. I've said before that it smells good enough to eat. The Purina smells about the same as dog food, vaguely chemical. Another point on the economics is while corn makes up a substantial portion of the feed, I as an organic producer get twice the price for each bushel I sell, compared to a conventional/chemical corn grower. As I said before, the retail price is only 10% higher for organic chicken feed. Something to think about for any of you out there who aren't organic.
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I use my Huawei Mate SE phone to take all the videos and pics seen on the site. Several months ago the battery swelled up causing the screen to crack. I bought replacement parts on eBay and got the phone working again. Couldn't have done it without YouTube.
Unfortunately it looks like I can't embed the video on the site. If you're interested go directly to the video, linked here. I'd never had a phone apart before - they're amazing pieces of equipment.
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