This blog is about corn harvest and not Congress, I swear.

Corn’s being harvested in the Deep South and the pace is picking up. Over the last three weeks, I’ve seen in north Florida and south Georgia the combines at work or seen the result of the work. It’s a good sight to see and it’s time to get this harvest season going in what has been one heck of a wet growing season so far.

The rains are still coming pretty regularly across much of the South, but not near as heavy or as “delugy” as they did for much of June and July as many locations got a year’s worth of rain in the first half of 2013.

The corn didn’t seem to mind the wet weather too much and made, as far as I can see, good yields even though disease and fungicides were the talk for much of the growing season. Still are as harvest is just now getting under way.

The corn is coming in pretty wet right now in most fields, and that’s no surprise. I’ve spoken with a few farmers and a county agent or three. Corn moisture in the field is running in places at 30 percent or a bit higher. Pretty high. Combines are moving slower to get this wet corn in, but to get it done as farmers race to get early fields harvested. Early corn gets the “worm” (premiums) so to speak.

Peanut wagons are being loaded with wet corn and run to get moisture down to good handling levels, nothing new for Georgia particularly. But this year, I imagine the practice will be widespread where available. There’s an art to drying wet corn in a peanut wagon, but most farmers know the tricks. 

It’s amazing what controlled hot air can do to naturally help things. Man’s been doing it for millennia to preserve food in a healthy way and in recent years to help keep us cozy during the short days of the year.

It’s also amazing to see what uncontrolled hot air can do to monkey things up, particularly the hot air that flies out of man’s mouth. Sorry, said this blog wasn’t going to be about Congress. So, I’ll just stop here.

Here’s to a good corn harvest and to well-used hot air.