Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Hallelujah! Some rain this morning! Hasn’t rained a whole lot, but it’s sure soaking in. .13″ (3mm) so far, but it looks like more is coming. This sure is welcome, and we are grateful. The dust is settled for now.
Yesterday afternoon, we were harvesting soybeans up at the Lett farm between Wheatland and Bicknell, and we got a hard rain for a few minutes. The soybeans went instantly from 9.5% to 16%, so we stopped. But we knew if the sun would shine for just a half-hour, we could return to the harvest there. Sure enough, the sun popped out again, so we went back to cutting beans at 630 pm. They were 10 or 11% then. It appeared that more rain was coming later in the night, so we stayed and finished off the Lett and Watjen farms by 1030pm. It took about an hour and a half to get all the combines, headers, trucks and pickups moved back home. I got home about midnight. It was so satisfying to get those two farms on the ‘done’ list.
The combines sat at Lett for a few hours during a short rain delay on Tuesday.
Rain was coming, so we were able to cut soybeans late into the night…
We have marched through over 600 acres of soybeans so far, and we have been so pleased with the yields. Even the Lett farm, which is reclaimed strip mine land, had one of its best yields ever. We may not set a record for soybean yields this year, but it’s been pretty good.
Yesterday morning, we finally diagnosed the screeching noise on the right side of the JD S780 combine. John found a bearing out of a pulley on the air vacuum blower near the radiator. They had one in stock at Alliance Tractor in Vincennes, so a quick run to town secured the correct part. John had it installed in a few minutes.
This bearing in this little pulley was completely shot. Good thing it got replaced. There was no useful life left in it!
The dry weather has been helpful for fall harvest, but it was SO dry that we needed this rain to help fill out the pods off the double-crop soybeans (DCB) and to have some moisture into which we can plant the 2024 wheat crop. I think now we can start planting wheat as soon as practical.
Leaves on the trees are beginning to turn lovely colors, and there have been some beautiful sights around Knox County this week.
Monday morning clouds were pink in the emerging sunlight.
Brandon’s wife Emily caught this double rainbow over the farm during this morning’s rain
So, life will get a bit more hectic for a week or so. Larry will leave the harvest crew for a while and devote his efforts to planting wheat. That will put a dent in the crew for corn harvest.
So far, so good.
PTL for today’s rain.
