The weather forecast for early November has been calling for cooler than normal temperatures, and perhaps more importantly, dryer than normal conditions. Vermilion County Farm Bureau spokesperson Tom Fricke says that’s a double dose of positive, dry means more harvesting down the stretch, and cooler means more field work, such as the application of fertilizers.
AUDIO: Guys are heading back into the dryer fields so that they can continue to do some work; some doing tillage work, some finishing harvest. We’re now into cooler temperatures, allowing us to start applying anhydrous ammonia and that type of thing. We just need to keep some dryer days coming so that we can continue making progress in our fall work.
As far as how the corn and soybean harvest yields are looking, it’s always looked like a solid but not record breaking harvest. But Fricke says, corn news seems to be getting even better, with a bit of the jury still out on soybeans.
AUDIO: I think the corn’s turning out a little bit better than maybe early numbers might have indicated. But overall it’s a good harvest. What beans have been coming in have been coming in real well. Now as we get into these later days, if we keep getting more rain on it, then you could start getting some damaged crop out in the field: having pods not being able to get harvested and that type of thing. But we’ll just keep working through it and make the best of it.
As Fricke has explained, many farmers stuck with harvesting corn a little longer this year, rather than switching over to soybeans as soon as they were ready.
