I said in an earlier post that I would try and include pictures from time to time showing some of our equipment, and give you a visual of what we have going on around the farm. So here are some pictures from our harvest run this year. There aren't quite as many as I had hoped, and they probably aren't the best of quality, but I did what I could with my trusty IPhone so here they are.
We use the combine to harvest our crops. This machine has heads that attach to the front for the different crops we grow. Our bean head in these pictures harvests 30 feet at a time. The material is carried into the combine where the grain is separated from the plant. The grain is the carried into a holding tank at the top of the machine which we then unload in to the trucks, or grain cart.
We use the trucks to haul our grain to the local elevator which buys our grain and then re-sells it to a variety of processors like ethanol plants for fuel, companies that make soybean and corn oil as well as animal feed etc. The grain cart sometimes serves as another truck giving us a place to dump the combine while the truck are gone to town, but most of the time we drive the tractor and cart across the field and unload the combine as we are harvesting. I'm sorry I don't have a picture of that, but since I'm usually the one driving I can't take any pictures of that operation. Maybe next year I will be better at snapping pictures while driving.
You can't see it very well in this picture, but here we are on to corn harvest. While we are harvesting corn we pick 6 rows at a time, which is roughly 15 feet wide. Our corn rows are spaced 30 inches apart which is a pretty standard spacing for most farms. The satellite dish looking thing on top of the combine is the grain tank which is where the harvested grain is stored until we unload.
As you can see we even managed to get the next generation of the Roberts family involved with this years harvest. She was more interested in the spinner knob on the steering wheel in the tractor than what was going on. She really liked riding the the combine because it was easy for her to fall asleep. She only managed to stay awake for a whole 15 minutes the first time.
This years harvest was not as good as normal because of the drought. Our corn struggled to average 100 bushels per acre. In a normal year we would have almost twice that much. Our soybeans on the other hand were quite good because of the late summer rain we got. We averaged 50 bushels per acre which is a little better than our average of 45. The price was good which helped to off set some of the sting from low yields.
Since we finished harvest we've been busy doing some other fall jobs. We had lime applied to some fields that needed it, and we've been doing some tillage work to help break down the residue before next years crop. I've also been busy pulling soil samples to send to the lab to test for soil fertility so that we can plan for how much fertilizer we need to apply next spring.
I have also been really busy with my full time job. Fall in the seed business is the peak of the selling season. I have been calling on customers, and confirming the orders that were placed back in the summer, and scheduling delivery of next years seed to my customers. Yes that really happens I told you in an earlier post that we barely get one crop in the ground before we start planning for the next year, well we hardly get finished with harvest before the seed we need for next spring starts coming in.
I hope that throughout the winter I can do a better job of updating the blog and keeping everyone informed about whats happening in our little corner of the world. I've decided to finish up all my posts from now on with a little list of the things that we will be working on over the next month or so. Here's what we've got working for now:
Working with landlords to re-new rental agreements for next year
Finishing up what tillage work we can while the weather allows
Taking delivery of seed
Planning next springs fertility and herbicide programs
Getting equipment put away for the winter
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to answer them. Thanks so much for reading.
