In Howard County, Indiana weekend and Monday morning rains did bring harvest to a halt but won’t have the impact of the extensive rainfall to the west. Denny Maple farms near Greentown and told HAT there has been almost an inch of rain with .4 coming Monday morning. But if there is no more rain and some good drying conditions he could be back cutting beans by Wednesday afternoon. And so far beans are the only crop he has started.
“We haven’t shelled any corn,” he said Monday afternoon. “We have some neighbors who have but I haven’t heard any yields. I have heard that it’s really good, but I haven’t heard any yields yet.”
As for bean yields Maple doesn’t have any of the exceptionally high numbers to report that are coming in from other parts of Indiana.
“So far our earlier beans, our late group 2 beans are in the mid 50’s (bushels per acre.) We cut a few early group 3’s and they’re a little bit better so far. They’re in that 60 range, probably low 60’s when it’s all said and done, but I don’t see that we’re going to see very many in the high 60’s on our end.”
The average yields last year and the year before in those fields were in the mid-60’s. But they’re just not quite as good this year.
“We didn’t have heat like we needed on the soybean crop and we were short of rain in July and August especially here, compounded with some early spring rains that really slowed the crop down and probably stunted it some.”
Early bean moisture was down around 10 percent and Maple has registered 12-13 percent moisture since.
Maple is over half way through bean harvest with another 3-4 days of that. He likes to be completely finished with beans before starting on the corn and he’s hopeful there will be more corn dry down between now and then.
“I stopped at the local elevator this morning with a corn sample and what we tested was about 22%. The test weight was extremely light on that particular hybrid, so I don’t think the test weight is quite as good this year because of the growing season, but obviously there is going to be a lot of bushels the way it appears. I’m hoping the crop continues to dry down so I don’t have to spend so much on gas.”
Hoosier Ag Today brings you the latest from the fields across Indiana with Crop Watch – brought to you by Trupointe Cooperative and Winfield Solutions – now open in Milford.
