Faribault-Area Farmers Not Complaining About This Year’s Corn Harvest

This is what farmers are seeing these days from a combine cab. Rows and rows of corn waiting to be harvested. Most farmers are reporting a very good corn crop -- so good that it takes a long time to harvest it! With my combine I am traveling about 1.2 mph. This field is one-half mile long, so that means it takes almost an hour to make a round. We are not complaining about how long it takes because of all the corn. With low corn prices, having a lot of extra bushels to sell lessens the pain a little bit.

So far the weather has been nearly ideal. In fact it has been the nicest weather for harvest that I can remember. Another plus is that the corn has dried down naturally in the field. We will be saving a lot of money not having to dry the corn in high-temperature dryers. The only negative is fires. Because it is so dry there have been a number of combine fires. In addition there have been a number of fires in corn fields. In one situation a farmer was chopping stalks and hit a stone with the hammers on the chopper. The sparks started a fire.