Harvest 2021 is Finished!
Well, I wasn’t able to get back to the blog as quickly as I was hoping, so this update is a little later than I would have liked it to be. Better late than never though! Both October and November were busy months for us, but as of last night, 12/2/21, I can officially say that harvest 2021 is finished! It was a long road to get here, but it feels amazing to have it all behind us. Finishing harvest is normally a little bittersweet, but I think everyone can agree there were no bittersweet feelings this year, just a huge sigh of relief!
Of course, the down corn continued to be our biggest challenge. At the start of harvest, our original plan was to get the worst of the worst corn harvested first. Well, as we got later into fall, the weather started to change, and we weren’t able to do that. In October, a rainy pattern started to develop, it got cooler, and the days started to get shorter. As the sun went down, the moisture started to come up and the plants would start to get tough. If there wasn’t a breeze to keep everything dry, and the tough plants were almost impossible to harvest. Any type of rain, even just a little sprinkle, completely ruled out harvesting. If the plants were wet at all, we just couldn’t harvest the farms that were down. So, we picked our farms based on the condition of the plants and the weather. Like I said in my last post, we really struggled to come up with a game plan. We would come up with a plan, try it, something would happen, and we would have to pick up everything and move to somewhere else. Or just quit early and try it again the next day. We did end up having to fit reels to both corn heads. We were hoping that we would be able to get away with just putting a reel on one and sending the other combine to harvest standing corn. But it just didn’t seem like we were making good progress by splitting up. So, the second corn head got a reel as well.
Even with the reels, we still had other challenges to face. Breakdowns were something we struggled with all fall. The reels combined with the soft ground and rotten plants created a problem we were afraid of, but still not completely prepared for: dirt in the machines. The plants were so rotten they wanted to wrap up on the reel, and once they wrapped the whole plant got pulled into the machine, root ball and all. Those root balls were covered in the muddy soil from the rainy spells and that packed everything full of mud. We were having to stop the combines after every cart load to dig mud out to make sure we didn’t break the clean grain elevators. Not only was mud getting packed into the machinery, it also acts almost as a sandblaster, just wearing away at the metal in everything. Thankfully, November’s weather was much better than October. The temperatures were slightly above normal and precipitation was much below normal. The lack of precipitation was a huge bonus for us. If it would have turned wet or snowy, there is no way we would have been able to finish when we did. This last week of harvest was perfect for finishing up the last of the down corn; sunny, breezy, and warm. We finished on what was possibly our worst field. Not exactly a high note to finish on, but overall it went better than we were expecting.
But that’s enough reflecting on the bad parts of harvest 2021. Were there any good parts? Of course. Soybean harvest went off without too much of a hitch and the yields were good as well. We actually ended up purchasing a third combine to help finish out the year and were able to run three combines in the same field for the first time ever. Things disappear fast when you are running three 40-foot draper heads at the same time! We got to the beans a little bit later than we were hoping, but once we got there, we were able to harvest almost 2,000 acres in just over a week. We had a little hiccup with some rain before we were able to get them all combined, but it ended up working out perfectly. We had an issue at the bin site early one Saturday morning that couldn’t be fixed until the next Monday which meant we weren’t able to harvest corn. So, we just switched to beans and by the time we finished those up the bin site was ready to take corn again.
Another fun thing was when Prairie State Tractor brought John Deere’s new X9 combine out for us to demo. It’s quite a bit different than the machines we currently have, and it was neat to see the future Deere is planning for. Of course, no fall would be complete without lots of wildlife sightings. We saw a lot of the normal wildlife, deer, bunnies, racoons, hawks, even quite a few coyotes. But we had some more unique sightings this year as well, groundhogs, quail, pheasants, and lots of bald eagles! Over the past couple of years, eagles have moved back into our area in a big way. It’s still always neat to see them hanging around, and you don’t really have an appreciation of just how large until one flies up close to you!
Even though harvest is over, there is still plenty of work to be done! Tillage until the weather is no longer fit, trimming brush, repairing harvest machinery, hauling grain, and plowing snow are just some of the things on our to-do list. And, of course, spring will be here before we know it, so there is all the spring prep work to be done! Winter is our slowest season, of course, so I should be able to get back to the blog in a more timely manner this time and will probably check back in shortly after the new year. In the meantime, if you would like to keep up with us you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and now TikTok as well! We are @westbureaufarms on all four. We are wishing you the best this holiday season and see you again in 2022!
