Corn - knee high by the 4th of July - not any more!!!

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Zeus-cat

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Anyone remember that little ditty we use to say in the summer? Well, my wife and I came across some that was 9 feet tall yesterday (July 12th). I am not kidding about that. There was a big field that we rode by and there was a low spot. The corn was as tall as the rest of the corn in the field which was about 6 feet tall. So the corn in the low spot just grew to the same level as the other corn. I got off my bike and stood next to it and I swear it was a good 3 feet over my head. :surprised:

Man, if you see corn in Ohio that is only knee-high by the 4th it is seriously behind schedule.
 
Was the corn as high as an elephant's eye?
Did it look like it's climbing right up to the sky?
 
Thank Cargill for our mutant food supply.

Virtually ALL the field corn you see growing is good old #2 yellow field corn... which goes mostly for animal feed, ethanol feedstock, industrial uses (like high fructose corn syrup) and other such uses-- NOT for human food.

The corn you eat off the cob or from the can or frozen is sweet corn. Totally different stuff...

No argument on the genetic engineering stuff... not a huge fan of it myself either, but that train left the station a LONG time ago already. As Captain Kirk said, "perfect timing-- you fix the barn door after the cows come home".

Just got home from Indiana... saw some corn out in the SW part of the state that was pushing 9-10 feet tall (couple weeks older than the stuff I helped plant at the BIL's in north central Indiana... his was about knee high when we got up there about three weeks ago, and was about six feet tall when we left... well, what didn't get blown over). I was just up there planting corn and beans about early May...

Got a heck of a storm through the Rochester/Mentone/Warsaw area about July 1st... a kid got killed when a tree broke and crushed his bedroom off the end of their trailer house in Winona Lake (Warsaw). My BIL had a field of corn that was six feet tall the day before that was about 18 inches tall the morning after the storm. Here's a pic I took with my phone at about midday when we got out to their place... You couldn't see the tree line on the far side of the field the day before, but that morning you could see all the way across the field. It's since straightened up (quite a bit) though the stalks are now crooked (which will make harvesting this fall a real PITA) but luckily most of it was just leaned over and is straightening up-- if the stalks kink or break, it's done... won't make anything. BIL said the last time he had crop blown over like that it was about a 50% yield hit...
IMG_20140703_085844388.jpg

His son in law had some even worse-- said his field looked like someone ran a roller across it... six foot corn before the storm was ankle high afterwards. At least he had crop insurance, and the "greensnap" buyup option (since if the corn is broken over or "snapped" isn't covered by regular crop insurance). Some of his has straightened up, so how bad it is remains to be seen...

Hopefully they won't get anymore strong winds or severe storms this year-- winds on already bent or leaning corn is usually enough to put it on the ground and finish it off... could have been worse though-- at least no hail...

The power was out from 12:10 am until sometime around midday the next day in Mentone (home of Larry Bell, founder of Bell Aircraft, who built the X-1 among many other aircraft). Lots of tree limbs down and stuff, but no major damage except to one VERY old building in downtown, part of which collapsed (the upstairs brick fascia on the leeward side, interestingly enough) onto the sidewalk... they closed the street and due to the poor condition of the building and its age they brought in a demolition company to tear it down. Pics are of the demolition outfit knocking the building down with a large track hoe sitting in the middle of main street... with half the town set up shop in lawn chairs across the street to watch the show LOL:)

IMG_20140703_084043009.jpgIMG_20140705_090109528.jpgIMG_20140706_103200330.jpg

Later! OL JR :)

PS... Cargill ain't responsible for the GMO's (genetically modified organisms) in crops anyway-- the real problem lies with the big two-- Monsanto and Dow Agriscience-- they've bought up MOST of the seed production capabilities in the US and "license their technology" to the remaining seed company giants, most of which are subsidiaries now of one or the other...
 
My Corn was as high as a Cats Eye and they chewed it up and ate it.:(
They like it the same way they sometimes like to eat Grass, but it does'nt make them Vomit.
 
Monsanto.

Fricken GMO. As the son and brother of organic farmers, this crap is a PITA. All the corn around us is Round Up ready, so we have to be careful where we buy our seed and when we plant. Last year our corn and everyone else's were pollinating at the same time and cross bred, so all our corn tested for GMO, which meant we couldn't sell it for food grade like we usually do. Cost the farm roughly $80,000.00. Luckily my brother found buyers interested in feed grade (animal consumption), otherwise they were looking at $300,000.00ish losses. This year we planted several weeks later to hopefully avoid the situation... Most of our yellow corn is bought by Frito Lay for Tostito's Naturals chips. There is also a big organic grain mill out west of us that needs feed grade grain, so they buy a lot from us too. Being organic, most buyers come to us to get our grain, as opposed to shopping around to get the best price, we wait for the best offer. We usually get 2 1/2 to 3 times the price of regular grain on the Chicago Board of Trade.

So our corn is barely shoulder high, and the other corn in the area is over head high.

Adrian
 
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Just got back from the Indiana Pardy sod farm launch. And the corn is way up there One farmer at the factory I work at says they have 65 day corn. I guess it dos not give as much yeld but in just over 2 months it is done outside of drying....
Mr. Bob
Starlight Dude
Countyline Hobbies
Grovertown, IN
 
Fricken GMO. As the son and brother of organic farmers, this crap is a PITA. All the corn around us is Round Up ready, so we have to be careful where we buy our seed and when we plant. Last year our corn and everyone else's were pollinating at the same time and cross bred, so all our corn tested for GMO, which meant we couldn't sell it for food grade like we usually do. Cost the farm roughly $80,000.00. Luckily my brother found buyers interested in feed grade (animal consumption), otherwise they were looking at $300,000.00ish losses. This year we planted several weeks later to hopefully avoid the situation... Most of our yellow corn is bought by Frito Lay for Tostito's Naturals chips. There is also a big organic grain mill out west of us that needs feed grade grain, so they buy a lot from us too. Being organic, most buyers come to us to get our grain, as opposed to shopping around to get the best price, we wait for the best offer. We usually get 2 1/2 to 3 times the price of regular grain on the Chicago Board of Trade.

So our corn is barely shoulder high, and the other corn in the area is over head high.

Adrian

Must be nice having that wide of a planting window...

Down here in TX that'd kill ya. Back around 1997, we had a super-wet winter and spring-- so much so that NOBODY could plant ANYTHING until early May. We were just coming off a killer drought that wiped out our cotton crop (most never came up since we were using an old "sword" style planter that lost too much moisture at planting time, and it never rained from late March until late July... by that time everything was ruined anyway, whether they got a stand or not). I went to the police academy that year since I had nothing to do but fiddle with some late July soybeans that I ultimately baled for hay anyway...

Normally we plant corn around here about the beginning of March... Sorghum follows a couple weeks later (mid-late March) and cotton around the first two weeks of April. In 97 it rained every other day from January until basically the first week of May. By then the extension people were telling the grain folks not to bother planting corn-- it wouldn't be tasseled out and silking for pollination until so late in the summer that temps would be hitting 100 degrees... and pollination goes WAY down above around 95 degrees IIRC-- at 100 degrees corn won't hardly pollinate at all AIUI... They told everyone to plant grain sorghum instead if they wanted a grain crop... it's not bothered by the heat...

It was funny that year because basically, EVERYBODY was totally rained out, so EVERYBODY got their crop in the ground within about a week the second week of May... it was already nearly a month late for cotton, which would normally mean that the bugs would just eat it up, and yields would be REALLY lousy, but since EVERYBODY was so far behind, the bugs were behind too... In a normal year, there's always SOME yahoo's who will start planting cotton the second week of March, basically when it's too cold, just to get their name in the paper for "the first bale picked in the county"... This pushes everybody else to risk planting early, and if you get rained out a week or two and end up planting "on time" when you SHOULD, you end up inheriting everybody else's bugs... Their cotton is early, so the hatching and overwintering bugs start feeding on theirs first and multiply, but by the time they build to damaging numbers, their cotton is finishing blooming and the bolls are getting hard, and the ripening cotton is less attractive to the subsequent generations of insects, which then move in en masse into your younger, tenderer cotton fields and then eat you out of house and home...

Glad I don't have to deal with that anymore...

Corn here is drying down... expect to see combines rolling in another week or so... sorghum is drying fast too... shouldn't be long now... cotton should be coming out mid-August...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Just got back from the Indiana Pardy sod farm launch. And the corn is way up there One farmer at the factory I work at says they have 65 day corn. I guess it dos not give as much yeld but in just over 2 months it is done outside of drying....
Mr. Bob
Starlight Dude
Countyline Hobbies
Grovertown, IN

Man, that IS short season corn!!! We were planting 90 something day corn at my BIL's down at Rochester... Grovertown isn't too far north of there actually-- I've been to the gun shop out on the highway with the BIL and nephews last fall...

Shorter the season the lower the yield potential, but if you're planting late or have wet ground or other reasons, sometimes it's a good fit... If there wasn't a call for it, it wouldn't be available...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Man, that IS short season corn!!! We were planting 90 something day corn at my BIL's down at Rochester... Grovertown isn't too far north of there actually-- I've been to the gun shop out on the highway with the BIL and nephews last fall...

Shorter the season the lower the yield potential, but if you're planting late or have wet ground or other reasons, sometimes it's a good fit... If there wasn't a call for it, it wouldn't be available...

Later! OL JR :)
He had to go to Michigan to get the seed that was that short of time. But better then no crop.
Mr. Bob
Countyline Hobbies
Grovertown, IN
574-540-1123
[email protected]
 
Anyone remember that little ditty we use to say in the summer? Well, my wife and I came across some that was 9 feet tall yesterday (July 12th). I am not kidding about that. There was a big field that we rode by and there was a low spot. The corn was as tall as the rest of the corn in the field which was about 6 feet tall. So the corn in the low spot just grew to the same level as the other corn. I got off my bike and stood next to it and I swear it was a good 3 feet over my head. :surprised:

Man, if you see corn in Ohio that is only knee-high by the 4th it is seriously behind schedule.

Zeus,

I'm in Ohio too and thought the same thing. My son and I were driving down the road and went by this field. This was on the Fourth of July coming back from our R/C model flying field. He mentioned the knee high thing and pulled over to get a photo. Here I am standing in the edge of the field. No trick photography. I am 6'3" tall and my arm is not short. You can decide how high the corn is.

corn July 4.jpg
 
He had to go to Michigan to get the seed that was that short of time. But better then no crop.
Mr. Bob
Countyline Hobbies
Grovertown, IN
574-540-1123
[email protected]

Yep, I hear ya... BIL wanted some 90 day corn to plant a wet hole, and was told "no can do"...

Not surprised you had to go north to get some...

Did yall get much of a blow or damage out of those storms a couple weeks ago??

Best of luck! OL JR :)
 
Tornados and wind damage 1 mile south and another 3 miles to our north. We got lucky. A few people I know didnt git power back till Saturday afternoon. Good thing they had generators.
Mr. Bob
Countyline Hobbies
 
Yep... I hear ya...

We got a phone call at my deceased MIL's house in the NE corner of Mentone at 12:10 AM from our niece, who lives over about halfway between Rochester and Winimac off 14... They were under tornado alert and the storm was raging there, and heading our way. My wife, raised in Mentone in that house (which has the ground floor at ground level in the backyard, but is basically a basement since the house is set into a hillside and the south walls are underground at the front of the house) and our choices were her bedroom (which has a basement window facing south) or the bathroom, with no windows at all). I was ready for bed and headed there when the call came in, because I had to go help my BIL work on a semi the next morning at 7 am. I decided to go on to bed-- it had been raining and a little windy for awhile, and although the north facing wall and window of the bedroom is at ground level (facing north) the storm was rolling in from the east, so I didn't worry much about it... besides, if I heard the wind getting too raucous or bad I would simply step catty-corner across the hall into the bathroom of the all-concrete and cinder block constructed lower level of the house and shelter then. The power went out right about the time I laid down to sleep. I use a CPAP machine and of course with no power that's not gonna work, so I just laid there and tried to doze off. The wind got a little rowdy but didn't sound any worse than storms we typically have in SE TX, so I didn't worry about it much. After a couple hours I FINALLY drifted off (I'm used to the CPAP machine and a fan running for white noise and keep the air moving to help me sleep) and woke up about seven to go out to the BIL's place just north of Rochester. Had a hot shower thanks to the city water still being available (something we don't get to enjoy in the country because when we lose power we don't have electricity to power the water well), and the fact that the hot water heater was full and still hot. Got a call from the BIL when I got out of the shower that he would be delayed coming to get me because they just got power back north of Rochester and he was waiting on his coffee maker. My wife and I drove around town and checked on some church friends and viewed the damage-- the southwest part of town had power, so the only place in town open and functioning was the mini-mart, that was doing a booming business selling coffee and breakfast items... but no credit cards due to their inability to connect to process payments...

Anyway, the BIL had some corn leaned over pretty badly, but it's straightened up to a large degree... harvest will be "interesting" though...

Later! OL JR :)
 
In regards to the op question, if I remember correctly, the saying was that corn should be at least knee high by the Fourth of July - anything smaller than that won't mature in time to harvest and dry.

Luke: next time you are coming through sw Indiana, check the Launch Crüe website for our schedule - if you are coming through on a launch day, we'd love to have you stop by and visit with us. Our site is in Holland Indiana, which is about thirty miles east of Evansville off of I-64.
 
luke strawwalker said:
Virtually ALL the field corn you see growing is good old #2 yellow field corn... which goes mostly for animal feed, ethanol feedstock, industrial uses (like high fructose corn syrup) and other such uses-- NOT for human food.

NOT for human food??? You're joking right???

With the exception of ethanol, everything else you mentioned, we humans eat. With bio-accumulation, the pesticides and GMO proteins which the cows, pigs and chickens ingest from Round Up ready GMO corn get served up on every grocery store shelve across America.

And HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is in more human food than you can shake a stick at. Just start reading the labels on the food in you kitchen and you'll quickly see what I mean. One researcher I know of compared it to Cocaine. He said that during a recent trip to Peru, he had Coca leaf tea and chewed the leaves of the plant as people have done for centuries with no ill effects. It is the way nature intended it to be consumed. But after it is refined and intensified to the point at which you have cocaine, it is extremely damaging to the human body. The same, he said, can be said for corn and HFCS.

My wife and I don't eat any of it if we can help it, but it's not easy to do as it is everywhere now. My gut & stomach will tell me in about a half an hour to an hour when I've eaten any GMO food.
 
In regards to the op question, if I remember correctly, the saying was that corn should be at least knee high by the Fourth of July - anything smaller than that won't mature in time to harvest and dry.

Luke: next time you are coming through sw Indiana, check the Launch Crüe website for our schedule - if you are coming through on a launch day, we'd love to have you stop by and visit with us. Our site is in Holland Indiana, which is about thirty miles east of Evansville off of I-64.

Hey Greg! Hope things are going well for you... that job situation worked out I trust??

Might just have to take you up on that... Usually we stop in down at Spencer to visit Betty's Aunt Orma and her boys (up on Porter Ridge Road, same one as that goofy show "Porter Ridge" that was on satellite last year) and then either go to Evansville to spend the night or stay in Spencer... then we usually go to the Nashville area to hang out with Betty's college friends for a couple days or so. Sometimes we just cut straight south from Indy to Louisville, depending on the circumstances...

Later! OL JR :)
 
NOT for human food??? You're joking right???

With the exception of ethanol, everything else you mentioned, we humans eat. With bio-accumulation, the pesticides and GMO proteins which the cows, pigs and chickens ingest from Round Up ready GMO corn get served up on every grocery store shelve across America.

And HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is in more human food than you can shake a stick at. Just start reading the labels on the food in you kitchen and you'll quickly see what I mean. One researcher I know of compared it to Cocaine. He said that during a recent trip to Peru, he had Coca leaf tea and chewed the leaves of the plant as people have done for centuries with no ill effects. It is the way nature intended it to be consumed. But after it is refined and intensified to the point at which you have cocaine, it is extremely damaging to the human body. The same, he said, can be said for corn and HFCS.

My wife and I don't eat any of it if we can help it, but it's not easy to do as it is everywhere now. My gut & stomach will tell me in about a half an hour to an hour when I've eaten any GMO food.

I understand full well what the ULTIMATE use is... that's not what I said. I said that MOST "field corn" is NOT used DIRECTLY for human food, and it isn't. It's used for livestock feed and ethanol and HFCS feedstock. Of course most of the byproducts of those processes are used as livestock feed to (at least in ethanol production, not sure about HFCS production) as "dry distillers grains" or "wet distillers grains". Some yellow dent does end up ground as cornmeal, corn starch, and for things like corn chips, tortillas, polenta, etc. What isn't yellow dent corn is mostly white corn, which is produced much the same way by the same companies.

Basically EVERY major crop has some GMO variants nowdays, and thus the products made from them. Soybeans and soybean meal or protein or lecithin from GMO soybeans is used in practically everything, much like HFCS. So is wheat and a lot of other grains, most vegetables, etc. Last year I was hauling "Plenish" soybeans my BIL was growing-- had to deliver them directly to his son-in-laws family elevator, which was the designated "delivery point" for them, since they have to be delivered to an approved 'delivery point' rather than just any old elevator, since they have to be kept out of the regular soybean supply chain. Plenish soybeans are genetically engineered to produce a high oleic soybean oil that does not need hydrogenation, unlike regular soybean oils and most other seed oils. Increasingly most of the oil your food is fried in is from GMO's... including cottonseed oil, which has been GMO for decades now...

As was mentioned in another post, genetic contamination from GMO's to surrounding crops, including "organic" crops, is a HUGE problem and there is very little that can be done about it, other than strategies such as delayed planting or buffer zones and such. Heck the environmentalists have found GMO genes even in southern Mexico, in the "cradle of corn" where the natural predecessors to our modern field corn, teosinte grass and the ancient native flint corns selectively bred by Native Americans for centuries, still exist (and which is a genetic resource pool of inestimable value for things like pest resistance and new NATURAL traits not found in the highly inbred seed lines commonly produced in the US... most people don't remember the huge outbreak of corn blight in the 60's or 70's, caused by genetic susceptibility in the genetics caused by overreliance on highly inbred lines caused by years of hybridization and back-crossing to the same parent lines-- it was only solved by finding naturally resistant varieties and cross-breeding them into these inbred parent lines, passing on the resistance genes). With GMO contaminating even the very "root stock" of natural corn parent lines, this genetic resource is being damaged in unimaginable ways... what natural genetic variations leading to disease resistance or other traits is being lost forever due to genetic contamination from GMO's?? Nobody knows because most of it hasn't been identified yet.

The GMO companies are in a world-wide "gold rush" to patent EVERYTHING that they can lay their hands on... they're snapping up native crops worldwide, especially in poorer and third world countries, and "patenting" them as their own private genetic resources, into which they breed their "improved" GMO traits and then sell as a "licensed product".

Personally, I grew GMO cotton one year... Bt cotton which is modified with a gene from the bacteria Bacillus thuriengensis, which produces a crystalline protein that, when ingested by caterpillars (lepidopterous pests) feeding on the plants, fruit, and fruiting structures of the cotton crop, ends up plugging and perforating their digestive systems, causing them to stop feeding and die in a matter of days (most corn nowdays is "Bt" as well, and much of it is "stacked traits" such as Roundup Ready, genetically engineered to resist the action of glyphosate herbicide, or "Liberty Link" corn, designed to resist the action of Liberty herbicide, as well as Bt... there's stacks of multiple GMO traits such as Roundup Ready (RR) and Liberty Link (LL) as well as various Bt traits, which now come in various "iterations" (Bt1, Bt2, etc). Cotton is Roundup Ready (at least two iterations last time I checked) as well as LL and some others, and new ones are coming out. The same is true for most crops. Personally, I didn't see much yield increase (worth the added expense) and I didn't like the "grower agreements" that you must sign to "gain access" to their technology... essentially a farmer signs all their rights away and gives the GMO companies "carte blanche" to do pretty much anything they want to on your land. Heck, they can do pretty much anything they want to anyway, as the Percy Schmeiser case proved... I didn't like essentially being reduced to serfdom on my own land, so I went back to regular cotton production and quit GMO's. Of course nowdays that's a difficult proposition, since the GMO companies have bought out virtually ALL the seed production in the United States during a frenzy of consolidation in the seed business during the late 90's and early 2000's, when most of the regional seed producers were bought out by the big boys and their lines merged with the "parent companies", leaving only a few big players, all of which are owned by either Monsanto or Dow Agriscience, the biggest GMO players. The only "conventional" lines left are largely inferior varieties, and they increased the prices on conventional seed to "incentivize" buying GMO seed.

It's a mess, but it's a mess our "beloved leaders" and our "trusted regulators" supposedly charged with looking out for our own best interests have not only allowed to happen, but openly embraced and made a fortune off of in the process...

later! OL JR :)
 
that's not what I said. I said that MOST "field corn" is NOT used DIRECTLY for human food

Joel, don't get me wrong, I'm not at all trying to argue with you. My intent was for those who read your post and are not well informed to not take away misleading information. Directly or indirectly, most Americans are eating this stuff daily and have been for years.

It's a mess, but it's a mess our "beloved leaders" and our "trusted regulators" supposedly charged with looking out for our own best interests have not only allowed to happen, but openly embraced and made a fortune off of in the process...

I agree 100%.
Please, don't anyone turn what's below into a political back and forth, lest is get's banned or removed. I'm simply providing a reference to back up Joel's statement.

"Due to the vested interest that Monsanto has in controlling regulation that affects its business, it has both donated to politicians and promoted the appointment of people who work for them to positions within the American government. As of yet, Monsanto has been successful in keeping its regulatory burdens low and getting its representatives into positions within the US government. The infiltration of regulatory agencies by corporate actors that is referred to here is called the “regulatory revolving door”. Individuals who work for industry go to work for the government, make public regulations, and then return to the private sector after leaving the public service. The following info-graphic gives a few examples of the revolving door between Monsanto and the United States government:"
Emphasis is mine.

geke.png
 
Here I am standing in the edge of the field. No trick photography. I am 6'3" tall and my arm is not short. You can decide how high the corn is. View attachment 177524

I can personally attest too the fact that Joe is indeed a very tall man...either that or i am a very small *peoples*.
I'll never forget the first time we met, i was prepping a rocket and, all of a sudden the surrounding area grew very dark as if the sun was blotted out in the sky.:eek:

I turned around and, the first thing that ran through my head was: "There's some W:surprised::surprised:kie in that one!" ;)
 
I can personally attest too the fact that Joe is indeed a very tall man...either that or i am a very small *peoples*.
I'll never forget the first time we met, i was prepping a rocket and, all of a sudden the surrounding area grew very dark as if the sun was blotted out in the sky.:eek:

I turned around and, the first thing that ran through my head was: "There's some W:surprised::surprised:kie in that one!" ;)

He's the first iteration of "GMO Joe" --- mostly human with a few wookie growth genes spliced in. Unfortunately, it seems like he has escaped into the environment.
 
Yep, I hear ya... BIL wanted some 90 day corn to plant a wet hole, and was told "no can do"...

Not surprised you had to go north to get some...

Did yall get much of a blow or damage out of those storms a couple weeks ago??

Best of luck! OL JR :)


We have some oat fields that are now less than knee high instead of waist high. We will have to set the platform pretty low to get them all picked up. He might just winrow them first to let all the green dry out then use the pick-up head to run them into the combine, but it takes longer, because the winrowers are only 20ft wide and our draper head is 36ft wide.

Adrian
 
Hey Greg! Hope things are going well for you... that job situation worked out I trust??

Might just have to take you up on that... Usually we stop in down at Spencer to visit Betty's Aunt Orma and her boys (up on Porter Ridge Road, same one as that goofy show "Porter Ridge" that was on satellite last year) and then either go to Evansville to spend the night or stay in Spencer... then we usually go to the Nashville area to hang out with Betty's college friends for a couple days or so. Sometimes we just cut straight south from Indy to Louisville, depending on the circumstances...

Later! OL JR :)

Thanks for asking - yes, I start work this Thursday at the local Alcoa Aluminum plant - will be working for a company that provides gypsum for their power plant sulfur scrubber as a lab tech. The money is not as much as I was making as a QA Manager, but the hours are a lot better and the plant is about a half hour away. Fewer headaches, less stress, paid overtime and two day weekends. I think I'll take less money for that! ;)
 
Anyone remember that little ditty we use to say in the summer? Well, my wife and I came across some that was 9 feet tall yesterday (July 12th). I am not kidding about that. There was a big field that we rode by and there was a low spot. The corn was as tall as the rest of the corn in the field which was about 6 feet tall. So the corn in the low spot just grew to the same level as the other corn. I got off my bike and stood next to it and I swear it was a good 3 feet over my head. :surprised:

Man, if you see corn in Ohio that is only knee-high by the 4th it is seriously behind schedule.

I think the full expression is "knee-high to an elephant's eye by the 4th of July." So if you're expecting it to compare to your own knee, you'd be a ways off! Still, 9 feet high is pretty impressive.
 
We have some oat fields that are now less than knee high instead of waist high. We will have to set the platform pretty low to get them all picked up. He might just winrow them first to let all the green dry out then use the pick-up head to run them into the combine, but it takes longer, because the winrowers are only 20ft wide and our draper head is 36ft wide.

Adrian

Sorry to hear it... know how that goes... Back when I was still row-cropping we had a year where the sorghum started off fine, but then it turned really dry... the stuff didn't exert the head properly (the grain heads didn't come out of the whorl at the top on a 6-8 inch or so stick like normal, but just unfurled down in among the top leaves of the plant). Then we got a Gulf Storm that blew at about 45 mph sustained overnight and leaned the entire crop over to about a 45 degree angle. Then it kept on raining quite a bit over the next several weeks, keeping everything wet and damp...

Yields had already taken a hit, and now the head being down in the leaves where it couldn't dry out and the rains keeping everything wet made fungus more likely. They were already bringing in insurance adjusters from as far away as Iowa because the corn crop (which comes off usually a week or two earlier than sorghum) was a disaster, and my crop insurance guy calls to tell me that if I'm cutting and get a load with fungus, stop cutting and give him a call... I'm hauling to the egg farm 13 miles away (nearest sale point) and things are going good for about the first roughly half of the crop. Then one day I'm sitting in line for like an HOUR waiting to get unloaded because the Mexican guys running the receiving office and pit won't give me the okay... I have to get back for my after bus driving run (at the time) and started asking what the heck was going on, since it looked like a bunch of kids playing with a junior chemistry set inside... He told me "Honcho will be here soon-- he 'splain..." So I waited a bit and a big pickup pulls up and a big white guy boss gets out and goes in the office, and comes out a minute or two later with a sheet of paper about 2 feet long-- with a bunch of chemical formulae and molecular diagrams and information on it. Turns out my grain had "xearlenone" fungus, something that can't be fed to laying hens due to it messing up the shell formation process or some such. I now had to haul the grain to Hungerford elevator, another 13 miles away... So now I'm not getting the bonus the egg farm paid, and hauling twice as far, and getting docked for fungus. My buddy Doug bought the grain no problem, and showed me some that was SO infected with fungus that it looked like burned coffee grounds... Called my insurance guy and he said "keep cutting, keep the tickets, and we'll figure it out later" so I finished harvesting and a few days later got contacted by the insurance adjuster. Gave him my tickets and he retreated to his rental car to do the figuring. After 20-30 minutes, I went out to check on him (Iowa guy sitting in a rental car in the height of Texas summer heat...) and he was figuring away in his car with the engine idling and the AC on... his car looked like the dashboard of a 747, what with all the charts and books and insurance calculator disks and stuff... He told me it'd be a few minutes and shoo'ed me off... About 15 minutes later he knocked on the door and handed me the figures, explained them briefly, and told me I'd get a check. After being docked about 15 cents a hundred on the grain due to fungus, and lost yield due to drought and poor harvesting conditions (with leaning stalks and unexerted grain that doesn't thresh or separate properly) my indemnity for damages was a whopping $75-- the check will arrive in 4-6 weeks... Woop-tee-doo... the friggin insurance cost me $100 for cat coverage...

Oh well... how it goes I guess...

Best of luck with your harvest... I'm sure we'll have much the same problems with the Indiana corn now that it's leaned over badly...

Where yall at in Illinois?? We come up through Effingham most of the time... :)

Later! OL JR :)
 
Thanks for asking - yes, I start work this Thursday at the local Alcoa Aluminum plant - will be working for a company that provides gypsum for their power plant sulfur scrubber as a lab tech. The money is not as much as I was making as a QA Manager, but the hours are a lot better and the plant is about a half hour away. Fewer headaches, less stress, paid overtime and two day weekends. I think I'll take less money for that! ;)

Hey glad to hear it... pay cut isn't that great, but the better conditions certainly are... can't have everything I guess... there's something to be said for better working conditions, even if it is for less money... Best of luck with the new job!

Later! OL JR :)
 
Best of luck with your harvest... I'm sure we'll have much the same problems with the Indiana corn now that it's leaned over badly...

Where yall at in Illinois?? We come up through Effingham most of the time... :)

Later! OL JR :)

Effingham is just a little south of us... :wink:
We are ~60 miles straight west of Chicago on I88 just west of DeKalb, IL in a little farming town called Malta. We're about 15 miles east of I39 right on IL Rte 38. Send me a PM if you have time to stop by on your next trip to Indiana and want to stop by and see the farm. I probably could be persuaded to show you my collection of JD 2 cylinder tractors (like a proud papa of a newborn :facepalm:)...

Adrian
 
Effingham is just a little south of us... :wink:
We are ~60 miles straight west of Chicago on I88 just west of DeKalb, IL in a little farming town called Malta. We're about 15 miles east of I39 right on IL Rte 38. Send me a PM if you have time to stop by on your next trip to Indiana and want to stop by and see the farm. I probably could be persuaded to show you my collection of JD 2 cylinder tractors (like a proud papa of a newborn :facepalm:)...

Adrian

Hey just might take you up on that! Sounds cool. We could talk rockets too... :) Love old JD's... got a 38 or 39 "B" in the barn myself, unrestored. My Granddad bought it in about 1980 along with a #77 JD cotton stripper that he and my dad mounted on it. Course it was more of an antique than a useful harvester... the 77 stripper design was outdated about the time it was built... I tried scrapping the last cotton out of the already picked fields one time and ended up with more cotton burrs than cotton lint, and the gin didn't want to mess with it... (can't say I blame them). Ended up giving it to a friend for cattle feed...

The thing sat in the barn for probably 25 years, until last year... pulled it out of the barn, the old stripper had rusted out pretty bad and wasn't in great shape when we got it, so I pulled it off the tractor and sold it for scrap. The old B I put back in the barn. Need to restore it one of these days when I have some spare money... (haha).

Grandma's niece has her Dad's original Farmall B in the barn a few miles from here... he died in 1970 just before I was born, and the tractor hasn't been out of the barn since then. Her mother lived in the old two-room house on their farm until she died about 15-20 years ago. Nothing has been touched since. My great-granddad bought that tractor brand new for his son back in 1953, so I'd LOVE to buy it (cheap, since it hasn't been moved in 44 years!) and restore it, just to have as a keepsake, since it's been in the family the whole time. My great aunt won't hear of it though-- "too much sentimental value"... (yeah, right-- things sunk into the ground 6 inches deep inside the barn it's sat SO long, but it's too "sentimental" to part with??
I don't get it...) Not looking to fix and flip it, wanted to keep it in the family.

Oh well...

Next time I'm in Indiana should be around harvest time... help the BIL get the corn and beans out... drive truck, he's getting a semi once my other BIL ends up rebuilding the jackknifed truck he picked up at auction... we worked on getting the interior back in the salvage cab he bought to replace the wrecked one... probably be October... I'll let ya know when things are more firmed up...

Later! OL JR :)
 
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