Rains keeping crops progressing

Kurt Wyler

The past few weeks have been pretty muggy and we have been getting a lot of small showers scattered out every few days. It has made making dry hay pretty challenging. We have been wanting to make it dry, but we have been having to roll it up and wet wrap a lot of it. We’d like to do square bales but it has been hazy and the dew didn’t really get dried off until noon and that doesn’t give you a very big window. We thought getting it off now was better than letting it stand. The dry weather last month definitely did affect our orchardgrass tonnage. It was stunted and has not really bounced back. The alfalfa did not really get affected any.  

The crops are looking a lot better now. With the rains, corn is looking great. A lot of fungicide is starting to go on in this area. The majority of it is all put on by planes due to field size and the way the fields lay. It will still be a little bit before the beans get started with fungicide. 

We decided to not apply any fungicide on corn. Most of our corn is on hill ground and with all the trees it can be less than ideal for planes. We really hate running through the corn with a sprayer when it is this tall.

We do not have a lot of bottom ground in corn and we are not seeing much disease as of now. That could change in the next few weeks. We have had less insect trouble this year than in the past. We usually have to spray our alfalfa every cutting and we often spray the beans. Things look pretty decent this year. 

The majority of all the corn is tasseling. It looks like it may not be as tall as in some years. That may hurt our tonnage a little bit for silage, but we would rather chop shorter stalks anyway to get a little better feed value.

Joe Everett

I think we are doing really well. We have been getting rains in August and sometimes that doesn’t happen. We are expecting some more rains too. I have mowed my grass a lot and that usually makes for a good crop season. I enjoy mowing the grass, but I usually like my break in August and I haven’t been getting those. 

We got planted about when we normally get planted this year in this area. We are going to be looking to get started with harvest about when we normally get started. We are super happy with how things look when we get out scouting. It seems like our mode shifts a little this time of year. We are looking at varieties to see what we need to be planting next year.

We are pretty much finished up with fungicide applications. I am glad we did that because everything looks really good and I think it will be a benefit this fall. 

We have not been seeing diseases yet. Right where we are there are not many insects either.

We have started getting ready for harvest. We are getting the combine ready, working on bins, and getting everything lined up. Harvest time will be here pretty quick. We are trying to get some of the issues alleviated ahead of time before we get started. 

The Shelby County Fair was great. We had good weather and I felt like attendance was good. I think my favorite food this year was the elephant ear. 

Nathan Birkemeier 

Things were touch and go a little bit as hot as it was getting, but we have actually been catching a lot of rains in the last couple of weeks. It is definitely needed. The crops look really good and this rain is going to help push things all the way into harvest. I think we’re going to keep getting some rains in the next couple of weeks and more heat. Hopefully that will work to our advantage and I think we could see some great bushels this year. 

Corn pollination is really good. I would say roughly 75% of the corn is tasseled and probably 50% is pollinated. The first corn in the ground this year is already really pollinated well and this rain will help grain fill when we get into that stage. The temperatures are going up, but not for that long of a time. It seems like we get a couple hot days and then a cool day. I hope the nights are cooling down enough to not hurt our pollination. 

As far as the calendar, we are going to be a little later and the corn will be a little wetter. I won’t be surprised is the corn is at 20% moisture this fall. Hopefully the gas bills will go down a little, but I definitely think a lot of dryers will be running this fall. 

Beans looks really good. They are starting to flower. This rain should really help and I’m hoping for a lot of pods this fall. 

We are scouting and there are some fields in the area with tar spot and fungicide is being put on for that. Some fields look pretty bad and hopefully the fungicide can help. We do not have any tar spot we have found. Our conventional tillage helps keep some of those diseases away and we have been fairly lucky.

Ryan Hiser

It is what it is out there. We are working with the hand we have been dealt. The beans are coming along better than I thought they may be, but you can still see the holes out in them. Corn looks really good and it is getting into pollination and silking. It will be interesting to see what yields start looking like in the next few weeks. All of our fields are pretty much pollinating at this point. There is some corn in the area though that is not even knee high in some places and not tasseled yet.

The corn looks better toward Bowersville. There are still holes, but we got in with an earlier planting date. We have that one field we thought were going to rip out and we decided to leave, which is the best thing we could have done. It is a little more representative of weather conditions we had over here on the Fayette County side of our farm because of the amount of rain and delays in planting and everything else. 

We have been out spraying to get rid of some weeds. There have not been big pest problems we have been seeing. The calendar is going to potentially be the biggest issue because of how late some of these crops got out there. As long as the temperatures push these plants, I think we’re in a good spot. An early frost would devastate a good portion of the crop around here.