It’s time for Labor Day Weekend, and that means on the other side of it; farmers will be getting serious about harvest time.
Tom Fricke of the Vermilion County Farm Bureau says despite all the recent projections about a great soybean crop across the state, you still have to let Mother Nature do her job first. Right now there’s hardly any sign of soybeans turning brown, and as Fricke reminds us; that, and other things, have to happen before the combine goes to work.
AUDIO: I mean the leaves have to turn yellow and then fall off, and then there’s still a moisture content issue. And you typically tend to wait on beans to dry in the field. Drying them in the bin doesn’t typically happen like you can do with the corn crop.
Fricke does not see too much harvesting happening until perhaps the week of September 19th. Yes, last year we had a busy late September for the harvest, before a wet October stopped everything dead in its tracks. But with this past spring’s planting season taking a while for some farmers, getting a lot done before October will not be easy; no matter how much they might want to.
AUDIO: There are always some fields that are delayed, because of either planting delays or replanting, that take longer to mature. It becomes more of a psychological issue than an actual field issue; how quickly you think you need to be getting in the fields. But once the crop is ready to harvest, they’ll be out there hot and heavy. So we need to make sure we’re giving them a lot of room on the roads.
And as always, we do indeed need to remember to watch for farm vehicles in the fall, so let’s keep that in mind starting on Labor Day. The usual routine is, start with the corn, go to the soybeans when ready, then finish the corn. Fricke says, corn should definitely get started first this year, as there were few early soybeans planted.
