Summer is Over

With school back in session, and "paternity leave" from this blog finally over, it looks like it's time to get back to some posting.  It's been a busy summer full of applying herbicides, scouting crops, attending meetings, taking a family vacation etc.  The crop has had generally good growing conditions -- a bit too wet for the first half of the season -- and a bit too warm for the second half.  The hot summer has rapidly matured the crop.  (Simply put, heat ripens the corn, but sunshine makes the kernels bigger.  Hotter days = quicker to maturity = somewhat smaller ears/kernels).  We are still looking forward to a very good crop.

We expect harvest to begin as early as sometime next week.  That will be our earliest start ever -- and a full 5-6 weeks earlier than last year!!  We generally like to start harvesting when the corn is around 25-27% moisture.  Right now we have some down to just under 30%.  With warm sunny weather the corn can drop as much as 1% of moisture/day or even a bit more.

As I read the paragraph above I am reminded of last year.  Much of the corn never got below 30% moisture -- we were still harvesting corn that wet in December!