Tuesday night, November 5, 2013

It’s the end of another day of soybean harvest.  We worked on Downen, Huey Hill, Huey Flat, and Mark Dunn today.   We got farther than we expected at noon today.  It was a bit ‘tough’ cutting, and the beans are carrying a bit of extra moisture 14-15% instead of the 13% the market prefers.  But we got a few more loads of beans into storage here today.  With some good aeration, they should be okay.
We had a demo combine today… a JD S680 with a 640FD header.  They brought it from Wright-Stemle in Jasper, Indiana so that I could test the new JD flex-draper header.  I was mostly concerned about how the knife would work.   We were working in some DCB, and with the straw it can often be hard to cut.  It did cut through the straw mulch and soybeans in an acceptable manner.   So, I had a favorable impression of this new header.  This also sped up the harvest, with 3 40-foot combines running through the afternoon and evening.

The best thing that happened was that the clouds parted about 2 pm, allowing the straw and beanstalks to become more dry and therefore easier to cut.  The DCB yields are not fabulous, but much better than 2012.

We have our “request in” for more sunshine, and that is predicted for Thursday, but rain is predicted for tomorrow.

‘night.