Monday, October 13, 2025
It has now been 4 full weeks of #harvest25. We are past half finished. The early-planted (a relative term in 2025) soybeans are completed, and the DCB are coming on fast. We have been working in corn since Friday the 3rd. When we finally get to the Freddie farm, it may slow the progress in corn, for it is our most distant location. With only two truck drivers this fall, they won’t be able to keep up with the two combines. Brandon may have to stop his machine and be a trucker for parts of the day, unless we can mysteriously come up with a temporary driver for 3 days! Any takers?
We are grateful for the corn yields. Many of our corn fields have had unprecedented numbers. With the comparatively low commodity prices, a bonus in yield really helps.
Last Friday, son Ben and his family came down from Indy to visit us on the farm. It was his goal to see that his daughter got her first combine ride. Of course, grandpa was happy to be of assistance! It feels good that Ben is still connected to his roots here on the farm. A successful pilot for Delta, he appreciates how life here growing up prepared him for his work in the skies. He wants to make sure his family understands how his roots here are important.
Ben and Emmy
She was right at home in this John Deere
We will continue to move through the fall harvest. It is hoped that the DCB will be ready next week sometime, and we can go back to soybean harvest on these sunny October days. We will do what the weather and the crop conditions allow.
We hit a pretty big snag last week, when the unloading pit here at the farm began giving trouble. The big conveyor that lifts the corn up out of the pit had a failure, and we are considering a re-build. It was refurbished in summer of 2024, and we thought we were good-to-go. Perhaps it needs a new chain and paddles, we are in the process this morning of figuring that out with our millwright at Montgomery Welding. We hope we can limp along until the full fix is done. That thing has worked so well since 1998, with a couple re-builds along the way (the chain in it may be the 1998 original). We are confident and hopeful it will be reliable again.
We had to borrow a gain vac to pull out the 500-bushels-or-so out of the pit when the drag stopped working.
Last Wednesday we had a number of things to solve, in addition to the pit problem. A loaded truck got stuck in the field, a tarp stopped working, a little hydraulic cylinder on the folding-latch mechanism on my corn head broke ($540), and an oil leak on the left side of the combine.
I had an oil leak in this little hydraulic line, but an O-ring fixed it!
There are some patchy spots in a couple wheat fields that have limited germination. That rain we got was just too light to get it going uniformly. We may have to take our little JD 1560 drill to run in some more seed. We will know more about that by the middle of this week. In the meantime, we ask that you join us in prayer for some beneficial rain.
Yes, some days bring challenges, some days bring joyful results. We try not to let our lows get very low or our highs get too high. We are grateful for the good corn yields, and we are first to acknowledge that it is a blessing from our Maker. We have had no injuries, and the dry and sunny days have been helpful for bringing in this crop.
Have a great week.
