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One of my pals just talked to a farmer where we pheasant hunt out near Madison MN. He said that if the forecast holds out he is going in after the corn tommorow and should be done by thursday. I guess the corn is getting close but there are still some standing water and mud issues. Lets hope the sky stays clear!

We now have a 40% chance of rain for Tuesday. Definately not what we need! Stay safe out there, and watch for trucks parked on the roads.

fishinchicks good advice. Also there will be mud on the roads from equipment and some of it gets to be big chunks and it gets awful slippery when it gets rain or snow on it. Also there will be a lot of night work so be careful when you see flashers on the road being it will be going slow and might be pretty wide.

I rather doubt that the corn is getting close. I think it's come to the point of either take it as it is or get nothing. My beans will come out this week whether dry or not if we can get to them with the equipment.

i could drive my truck in a bean feild with a boat behind today in 2wd so they aught to be going strong tomarrow!

We'll be going, but there are soft spots out there. A pickup with a boat weighs a whole lot less than a loaded semi.

Now they have bumped the chance of rain up to 60% for us tomorrow. Could be a really long day and really long night here.

ha true!.. ugghhh! im sick of this rain.. it can come back in 2 months as snow!!!

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I'm not a farmer. Can beans wait until the ground is frozen to be harvested?

It's been done, but the danger is having the pods break open and the beans shelling out before you have a chance to get out there with the combine. This is an unusual year with so much rain in the fall, and the crops are not behaving as they would on a typical year. I think most guys would prefer to get them out without waiting for the ground to freeze.

Corn, on the other hand, can wait until the ground is frozen.

That's exactly right and with the moisture....freeze...moisture...warm-up...moisture...etc., the risk of finding my beans on the ground is growing daily.

When the pods and seed take on moisture they swell and the pods can split. This is compounded even more if it freezes the wet pods. Then when things dry, the pods shrink and the seed drops out. The more this happens the more loss we experience.

pike doctor, here it is 3 weeks since your origional post, and conditions haven't much improved. Now on the eve of deer season, we're finally looking at some dry weather that should help us get working in the fields. We're going to start 11/6, with beans. The headrows have been taken out, but the combine got stuck 3 times in doing so, that's near Fairfax. I wish everyone that will be doing fieldwork the next few weeks a safe and successful harvest season. Phred52

lots of corn being taken out right now..

One of the best quotes I've heard in a long time came from a local farmer the other day. "This weather will make the guys that want to farm the whole county think twice!"

An old farmer told me that he knows that hes gambling every time he puts those seeds in the ground. There were a lot of crops coming out yesterday though on my way back from the sd border. There's a lot of areas that the corn wont come out until the ground freezes, thw worst that I saw was right around bellingham. Almost every field had standing water in it. Hope it stays dry.

I heard yesterday that the beans were at 16% and the corn was 20-22%. Alot fo corn driers working overtime this year.

Lets hope that this weather stays dry and the farmers can get the crops out.

I'M an Ag Met,and the posts here seem to be pretty spot on...I can tell you that after some showers around the state today most of this next week looks to be dry with above normal temps,could get some isolated showers over parts of MN by late week,but it should not be a gig deal...We think the above normal temps could continue for most of the month,maybe even well into next month,and as I have posted about before this might make for a late ice fishing start...Good Luck to all the farmers with the rest of the harvest.

Frank.

We finally got our beans out this weekend. I personally had a lot of combine problems but of course that is what I get for trying to farm with an antique combine that is tired and should be retired. I ended up tearing my motor apart for a possible head/ head gasket problem but did not get the time to finish. My neighbor finished his beans on Saturday morning so he came a finished mine up in the afternoon.

Now for the long battle of harvesting corn. I have heard reports of corn moistures ranging 17 percent all the way up to 40 percent!! Not going to be a good year for sure...

We are very thankful that we finished corn on Saturday night. We only had 240 acres, though. It really helped this year that we run a three crop rotation - small grain, soybeans, and corn. Next year corn will be our biggest crop, so we are hoping that it is not a repeat of this year's weather.

Now it is tillage and babysitting the dryers.

We blew a seal on the rear wheel assist for the combine on Sat. morning digging in the mud to try and get the beans out. Well, the combine is sitting and I dont know if we will get it running this week yet. We cant find parts, nobody want to try and fix it or nobody has time. We have about 80 acres of bean to go and about 300 corn.

Our propane company called and said that they may have to put us on allocation to get propane cause they cant get it in fast enough. So we might not be able to dry the wet corn that we cant go out and harvest.

I plowed about 150 acres yesterday. The ground was like peanut butter. But, we will take a bad job in the fall over a good job in the spring. Beans are making about 50 bu/a and corn is about 160-210 (22-26% moisture)depending on the field. Were gonna need some $5 corn to help pay some of these drying cost. We figure it is taking us about $75 per acre to dry it.

I haven't seen one NH3 tank go out of the coop yet. It is gonna be impossible to get one next spring I think.

returned yesterday from hunting SE MN and if 10% of the corn has been harvested I would be VERY surprised. Most farmers are still finishing up there beans.

Only 150 acres of beans left to combine, but those will likely have to wait until the ground freezes. Tried some corn, what a mistake! Moisture at 32%; even at 1/2 point per day drying, this crop will be standing for some time. Variable rate fertilizer was broadcast Tuesday on some of the soybean stuble and I incorported that today. Sounds like I wont be too busy the next couple of days as manure spreaders will not carry on the soft ground.

Up here we finished the soybeans on 11/8/09 and on the way home with the combines it started to rain again. Thought we were done for the year but some neighbors needed help. We were there for 2 days. We had 5 combines going for awhile. 156 feet being cut when we were all going. I was bugging the owner being he has a newer JD combine that my old 2188 with 36’ 974 Macdon was doing a lot better job on the short beans than his green machine. He must have thought so also being we would switch around in the field so I could take the shorter beans. On the bigger field we were on it was hard and didn’t leave any ruts. They had combined the corn this spring and ran over it once with the Salford and planted it with a single disc JD air planter. Right across the road were we combined ours there are lots of ruts with water in them. I think the 5” of snow really made matters worse. It was wheat the year before and worked once this spring and seeded with the Bourgault air seeder.
Typical yields up here are in the middle 20s and were wet.
So for this harvest season we had 2 loads of dry wheat and all the soybeans were over 18%.
The guys without straddle duals and RWD are saying their next combine will have it. At least we didn’t have to put the tracks on the other combine like last fall for the soybeans. There are still lots of soybeans left in the area. They are talking the corn up here has mold and might not be worth harvesting.
I still have about 650 acres to chisel once we get the tractor back from the shop. I was getting water in the fuel filter. Something to do with the injectors. Heard it was a problem with that engine. Enough rambling and be safe with the rest of the harvest.
We might not put any anhydrous on this fall. The news letters I get from the university say not to because it’s so wet and might have leaching problems.

Spent the weekend in Illinois, and travelled about 620 miles home today. I think I can safely say that we are fortunate that we are as far along with harvest in the SW corner of MN. There are 1000's of acres of beans and corn yet untouched in the fields, and it doesn't look like they will come out very quickly, either. Many places have deep, water filled ruts where the combines have either gone, or attempted to go.

We finally finished plowing on friday morning. The ground was frozen pretty deep, and the plow and tractor took quite a beating. We were doing some custom plowing for one of the neighbors that couldnt get done.

Our yields were pretty good for the corn, but the test weight was low and the corn had a lot of mold on it. My uncle actually got really sick chewing on kernals coming out of the dryer. I think there will be a lot of problems trying to store this grain.

I dont think the crop is going to be as good as everyone thinks. I thnk the low test weight and mold issues are really gonig to hurt the final numbers. But then again I have always thought their numbers are bogus anyway.

The beans were probably a little below average

We only got about half of our manure hauled and worked in. And we put zero fertilizer put on.

I would say there is still a little under 5% of corn to be harvested in McLeod county. I think plowing will end up about 15% from being complete as the ground is now completely frozen. And I would say that fall fertilizing is probably at about 40%, and i think they let a lot of anhydrous leak into the air.