Friday was dad’s target start date for harvest. We will not be making that target.

The last couple of weeks, we have had several cool days as well as some cloudy days. Combine that with a later start to corn planting, none of this is helping to get the crop to maturity and dry down. We hope to start the first of the week and will try to take advantage of some of the quick ship bids to ethanol plants.

Grain dryer updates

The delay might be a good thing as we are still waiting for the final part to come in for the grain dryer. After ten years and more than a couple million bushels, the dryer required some attention. Mainly the unload system had to be gone through.

New augers and bearings were installed by the dealer this summer. However, the manufacturer had shipped the wrong auger for the back of the dryer. After going back and forth, we opted to change the discharge to a side (rather than center) unload so that we could eliminate an extra auger from the system and drop dry grain directly into the air system that delivers corn to the storage bins.

Additionally, the move from 2g combined with a change in ownership of the dryer manufacturer also required us to update the PLC and monitoring system in order to keep remote monitoring and control capabilities. With these updates, we should be good for another ten years! The dealer now has the last part in their possession and should be here this week to install it.

Countdown to harvest

We have continued with more cleanup mixed in with harvest prep. Each day we try to knock a couple items off the to do list, but usually have to finish organizing an area that we had cleaned up in order to do the harvest prep tasks. I don’t think dad nor myself planned to spend this much time on clean up, but it was definitely needed. We could probably spend a couple more weeks if we had the time.

August into the first part of September is usually a lighter season on the farm, which provides some opportunity to do some of the ‘want to’ jobs.