Tuesday was a beautiful day across the Midwest and a great day for harvesting corn and soybeans, but many farmers, like Levi Huffman in Lafayette, could not get into their fields.
“It rained 1.7 inches so it’s going to be a day or two until we get to the field,” he told HAT. “We are in vegetable fields a little bit and today we’re picking cabbage. That’s muddy but we need to go anyhow.”
Huffman actually started harvest this year in a small corn field while giving soybeans just a little more time to dry. But he quickly switched over to beans and his happy with the yields.
“The beans we’ve been in so far, and it’s really good ground we’re working in right now, it’s from 65-70 bushels per acre. I’m sure we have some lighter ground that won’t quite make that but they look awful good in the lighter ground too. The wind has blow the beans to one angle and we have to slow down going one way to give the reel time to pick them up.”
And the wind has presented some challenges in the corn fields although stalks seem to be holding their own.
“We’ve been in a 40 acre field in a different area that had a lot of rain earlier and it’s really curved at the bottom. It’s really hard to tell what row you’re on so I’m really thankful for the auto steer because that keeps you right on the row.”
The good news is the early corn yields are also good.
“Very good,” Huffman said. “We had one field at 198 and the field we’re in now is 200 plus.”