A little bit of rain in Montgomery County Tuesday didn’t slow David Virgin from making more progress in both his corn and soybean fields. Harvest is well underway on his farm, and at about 900 acres complete he is a fourth of the way through.
Virgin is like a lot of farmers we’ve heard from recently. Yields are better than expected.
“Beans, going across the field, for us they’re running anywhere from 20 bushels to 80 in the good ground. But as of right now my field averages have been 41 on the low side for me and we had a 54 the other day, and it’s everything in between on soybeans.”
The corn yield highs and lows have gone all the way from 30 to 195 bushels per acre, but the field averages are definitely acceptable.
“Field averages as of right now, I took off a 156 yesterday and about a 140 on one, and about 130 on the other, so I haven’t hit a homerun on corn yet, but we’re very pleased with where we’re at.”
About a month ago he told HAT that some timely rains were likely to help soybeans, and it looks like that has indeed materialized.
“The group 3’s and later beans, we’re in those now, our yields have picked up on those. It’s also presented a cutting problem for us because I think the darn beans were about dead about 3 weeks ago, and now they’re re-hydrated and we’ve still got 13 percent beans going to the elevator with a lot of butter beans. So that’s been a challenge but we’re getting through it.”
Moisture in the corn has gone from 23 percent when Virgin started harvest to about 18-20 now. In his part of Indiana only minimal cases of aflatoxin have been reported, and so far there has been none on his farm.
In northern Indiana commodity trader and farmer Katie Darr reports more “better than we expected” comments.
“We were in a pretty hard hit area here in northern Indiana and it’s nothing in a normal year that we would be excited about,” she said. “But for this year it’s just better than we expected and a lot of the customers I have talked to have been happy as well, both corn and beans.”
Hear more from David Virgin in the HAT Field Update at the Agronomy page, sponsored by Advanced Ag Solutions.[audio:https://www.hoosieragtoday.com//wp-content/uploads//2012/09/Montgomery-County-harvest-well-underway.mp3|titles=Montgomery County harvest well underway]