Crop Watcher 10/01/10 Catchup

Todd Easton Coles County October 1, 2010: The fall work season has hit its stride in the last week as producers are taking full advantage of the ideal conditions to get a lot of work done. Corn harvest is all but done and on average the yields were mediocre compared to the last couple years. Soybean harvesting seems to be nearing the halfway mark and bean yields turned out to be the pleasant surprise of the year. Many fields are yielding in the mid to upper 60’s and a few are making it over the 70 bushel mark. Along side the combines farmers and service companies are running tillage tools and spreaders hard and catching up on a lot of work that couldn’t get completed after the difficult season last year and getting everything in great shape for the 2011 crops.

Sept 17

As you can see with the late nights the C W got shorter this week. All is going great corn harvest is 80% done and we took out 100 acres of beans that did pretty good.

Todd Easton Coles County September 17, 2010: Harvest continues at a rapid pace with almost no slowdown from the two weather events this last week. Standing corn fields are getting harder to find and in another week they may be very scarce. Soybean fields are also disappearing at a steady pace with most yields running the 50 – 60 bushel range so far. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the later beans will be able to hold these levels

Sept 10

Todd Easton Coles County September 10, 2010: Corn harvest is moving rapidly across the county this week with many producers nearing or over the halfway mark. The crop is dropping moisture rapidly and most fields are going straight into the bin. Yields are all over the place but it seems like the majority of the fields will end up in the 155 to 185 range. It is very apparent that close management of this corn crop was the key to better than average yields this year especially on the nitrogen side. A small handful of combines have been out in some bean fields this week but no yield reports have been circulated yet. The vast majority of the beans are still at least two weeks away from harvesting. Weather forecasters are giving a strong indication of rain over the weekend but hopefully it will not develop too much of a damper for this fall which so far has been an absolute blessing.

Crop Watcher 09/03/10 Pattern Change

Todd Easton Coles County September 3, 2010: More and more combines came out through the week only to be stopped by believe it or not precipitation that began on Wednesday afternoon. Corn moisture is running a wide range but most producers are finding fields to harvest in the 17 to 20 percent range with grain quality that is pretty decent. Yield reports are highly varied and for the most part not very exciting. It sounds like this is a wide spread phenomenon and recent market action supports that theory. Soybeans are a week or more away from any possible harvest at least. Yield guesses for the crop are all over the place and are probably just guesses until the combines get into the fields. As I write this thunderstorms are occurring outside and may hold any further harvesting until at least mid weekend. Just goes to show that when you think you have the weather figured out it along comes a change in the pattern.