“Now, the early maturing beans were relatively unscathed.” Bernard said. “Yes. The late maturing bean variety didn’t yield horribly, but they certainly didn’t yield up to what they could have been had it not froze.”
If only the farmers had planted just a little sooner, the frost wouldn’t have “cooked their goose.” In fact, another two weeks of no frost would have granted them a greater immunity.
“The bean plants froze about half way down to the ground,” Bernard said.
Despite the hard frost, the corn came out just fine, as it was much closer to maturity than the soybeans were. The corn didn’t remain enemy free though.
“There was a fair amount of this stalk rot out in the corn,” Bernard said. “Usually when you get stalk rot, it reduces the test weight on corn, but seeing as it was a fairly late stalk rot appearance this year, the damage wasn’t substantial.”
Bernard added, “The corn was running short on moisture during the tail end of the season, so it took as many of the nutrients as it could out of itself, rather than taking up a lot through the root system. Put simpler, when the plant cannibalizes itself so to speak, it’s more prone to things like stalk rot.”
Could this hardship have been prevented?
Bernard shakes his head, recalling the rainy and cloudy conditions that made April planting impossible. It wasn’t until mid-May that the farmers put a dent in the planting process.
“There are many factors that influence the reaps of harvest,” Bernard said. “From weather to soil fertility, weed control, insect pressure and disease pressure, things can turn for the good or bad quite quickly.”
When it comes to this year’s moisture levels, dry is the word that sums it up quite nicely. Generally speaking, the corn was harvested at about 11-13 percent, while the soybeans were much lower than that.
“Most years we are thinking, ‘Man I wish these beans would get dry,’” Benard said. “Well, they got dry this year. They started out one day at 12 percent. Then two days later, they were down to 8-9 percent.”
Ideally, Benard says most farmers would harvest soybeans at about 13 percent. Then for corn, he ventures to say that they prefer to harvest corn around an 18-20 percent moisture level.
“That way, you’re looking at the best of both worlds and will only have to dry the corn a little bit,” Bernard said. “But this year, a lot of the corn was harvested at 12-13 percent, while many of the soybeans were probably in that 9-10 moisture. That’s too dry. You give up bushels too when you do that.”
Pros and cons aside, the seven counties of Waseca, Steele, Freeborn, Faribault LeSueur, Rice and Blue Earth had a better yield than most other regions in Minnesota.
“We were able to start planting in the fields when a lot of parts of the state were not,” Bernard said. “I heard from many people traveling through our area over the course of the summer say, ‘Man you guys have some nice crops over there.’”
Bernard agreed with those visitors then and still does. So no matter what yielded what, area farmers should count their blessings.
“Because it was a warm summer, we had more nitrogen mineralized from the organic matter in the soil as well,” Bernard said. “That was a real big help with our crop production this year.”
Farmers also had no room to complain about getting their crop out this year. With the dry humidity and high level bean maturity rate, harvest could start right away in the morning, or continue all night long if desired.
“Normally, when starting out in the morning, there’s a ton of dew and the beans are tough, which doesn’t make for good combining,” Bernard said. “With corn, you can generally start whenever, as the moisture isn’t usually quite the bugaboo, unless you’ve got snow hanging up on them or something.”
Bernard added, “For the corn, they didn’t have to wait for the dryer to catch up either. They could just dump it right in the bin and keep going as long as they had bin space for it.”
Unfortunately, this peculiar dryness had some downfalls too, as many corn kernels were left lying in the field.
“When the corn runs through the combine, it is pulled down through snouts and there’s what you call a stripper plate on it,” Bernard said. “There the ear is snapped off of the shank or the stalk, and sometimes because it hits there with such force, the kernels on the butt end of that ear fly all over the place.”
Other crop casualties included entire corn cobs, made possible by the ongoing blustery winds experienced as of late. Truth be told, these air speeds contributed very much so to the average loss of 10-15 bushels per acre.
“The wind this fall really rattled and swung those ears back and forth, which tends to weaken that shank off,” Bernard said. “And when banged into the combine’s corn plant just a little too hard, they snapped off before ever going through the snouts and fell to the ground.”
The harvest now complete, Bernard and all area farmers remain in awe of how well the corn crop turned out. And even better, they can also breathe a sigh of relief, at least until next year.
“Harvest time can‘t be beat,” Bernard said. “You get to see the fruits of your labor and see what Mother Nature gave you.”
