Sunday Drives

Almost every Sunday after we get our afternoon naps Caleb, Chester and I all load up and go look at the cattle and along the way we will stop at the crop fields and see how they are doing.

Chester loves these drives, cause he get to get out and be part of the action.

At this point in the year the corn has made, but the beans are still going, so Caleb is checking to see how the plants are doing and if there are any bugs that are causing problems and determine if we need to spray for them....Thankfully it's cooled down and the bugs aren't a problem.

Our little helper is bring us a sample of what he found while he was out looking at the beans. As long as he picking the beans in the field and staying away from mine that are in my garden then I don't care!

If you look close at these two pods you will notice 4 little bumps, those are the beans. We don't often find a lot of 4 bean pods on our beans, but Caleb was finding a bunch in this field and that made one farmer very happy.  

Caleb is showing Chester what the beans actually look like. They are tiny here but they have grown a lot since then and the longer the freeze holds off the bigger they will get and the more bushels they will produce!

While we are out and about we also do some checking to see if the corn is ready as well.  How we do that is go out and pick a few ears and shell all the corn off of it. 

You can tell a lot by just hand shelling the corn. The easier it shells off the cob the drier it is and the closer to being ready to harvest.  The more accurate way is by using a moisture tester....it's that little thing there by Caleb's hands.

  

How it works is you take the lid off and fill it with a sample of corn...if your lucky you will have a good helper for this part!

 
Then the lid is replaced...

And then you just choose what type of crop you are testing and let it do the rest.  

On this day the moisture was around 17-18% and dry corn is considered around 15%. You don't want to harvest it too wet because if you take it to the local elevator then you will get docked on the amount of money you get when you sell and if you put it into your own bin then you have to run fans to dry it down so it doesn't spoil.

Since harvest is so late this year we have been harvesting some wetter corn and taking the dock, because we need to get it out so we can get the ground worked back up and wheat planted.

These pics were from a few weeks ago and since then the corn has dried down some....in between rains...so we have done some harvesting.

They were back at it again yesterday and they will be going today so I will give you some more harvest up-dates later.

JP