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By Joel Stottrup
 A bountiful crop, yet so difficult to harvest.
That’s how area farmers and ag specialists last week characterized this year’s fall harvest amidst intermittent and frequent rains.
A better stretch of harvest weather began last Saturday, one window of opportunity that farmers had been hoping for.
Rural Princeton crop farmer Larry Wilhelm opened a soybean pod in his soybean field just east of the Mille Lacs County border last Friday to show the effects of all the moisture. The beans inside the pod did not pop out like a farmer would want them to at this time of year. The pod should be dry and brittle and the beans inside hard, he explained. Instead the beans were soft and had to be squeezed out of the pod.
One area farm operation had all its soybeans harvested by mid-October, but that seemed to be the exception. The operation consists of Ron Shelley with his son Dale Shelley and grandson Tim Looney, on their dairy, livestock and crop farm.
Many soybean crops still sat on rural Princeton fields when this story was completed last Sunday. Those soybeans have soaked up a more than normal amount of rain during October.
Photo by Joel Stottrup
Princeton crop farmer Larry Wilhelm kneels next to soybean plants last Friday in a field he has in Wyanett Township just inside the western edge of the Isanti County line. The soybean crop is the one that farmers are trying to get out as soon as possible. The beans on these plants were far from dry last Friday after having soaked up frequent rains during October.
Corn, traditionally, can be left in the field longer before harvesting than soybeans, the farmers spoken to agreed. But they also cautioned that if the wet conditions persisted very much longer, the unharvested corn could have a serious mold problem.
Beans, the priority
But the soybean harvest for now is the priority. “The beans right now are really critical,” said Lee Todnem, who farms just north of Milaca and teaches farm business management. “If they don’t get harvested before snowfall, before snow that stays, they’re gone.”
Hearing about the Shelley beans already being harvested, he said the sandier soils like the Shelly operation has, usually results in an earlier maturation of soybeans so they can be harvested sooner. Todnem’s farm is on heavier soil with more clay.
The moisture content of soybeans in Todnem’s area are mostly at 17-19 percent, while the ideal is 13 percent, Todnem said last week. “A lot of people take them out at 14 1/2 to 15 percent and dry them,” he said. “But that means time and cost.”
Princeton crop farmer Tim Wilhelm said last week that he had harvested some of his beans “but very little.” Wilhelm told of a couple farmers he knows who tried harvesting soybeans on October 26, a day Wilhelm called “beautiful.” But when they found out the moisture content of their beans was at 17.8 percent they shut down and tried harvesting again after supper when they found the moisture at 16.2 percent, Wilhelm said.
Wilhelm tried harvesting beans that same day at 1 p.m. and got a moisture reading of 16.7 percent. When he went back for harvesting at midnight they were at 14.2 percent.
The grain houses in the Twin Cities that buy grain want soybeans at 13 percent or less, Wilhelm said, adding that some grain houses will reject any that are more than 14 percent.
Wilhelm did look at one bright side, observing that the rains have been gentle and “not gully washers,” and helped replenish a subsoil that had been tapped by the dry conditions earlier in the season.
Tim Wilhelm’s second cousin Larry Wilhelm, mentioned earlier, keeps tabs on rainfalls at his farm and found much more rain in the last part of the growing season. He recorded nine inches of rain between April 1 and mid-August, and 11 inches from mid-August to the end of October.
“It’s just been a tough month to get the soybeans out,” Larry Wilhelm said of October, which is backed by meteorologists who say this year’s October was wetter than normal. Larry Wilhelm, as of last Friday, had harvested about half of his little more than 200 acres of soybeans since starting his harvest on Oct. 7. “I probably could have started the week before,” he said, noting that the moisture content of his soybeans was at their best at that time, at 13 percent. Since then, the moisture in his beans rose, he said. Even on the nice day of Oct. 26 his beans had 16 percent moisture, he noted.
Extension educator weighs in
University of Minnesota Extension Educator Dan Martens, whose territory covers Benton, Stearns and Morrison counties, said the soybean harvest is way behind this year. “Normally we’d be done with the soybean harvest,” he said last Thursday. “My guess for Benton County is if it is half done, I’d be surprised. Maybe we are.”
Martens also illuminated another concern, at least for heavier ground if there is not enough let up in the rain. Too much moisture makes it difficult to get harvesting equipment on the fields without getting stuck, Martens said, and causes more wear and tear.
Tim Wilhelm can attest to that. When he was at Midway Iron in St. Cloud last Thursday he observed a couple individuals who were buying chains to get two combines unstuck.
Corn mold
“We’re also seeing mold showing up on corn,” Martens noted. He explained that it is most noticeable on a corn crop that wasn’t very dry when it froze.
But Martens still expressed confidence that the mold seen on some corn has not yet ruined the crop. It is not at the point where corn buyers would reject the corn. The presence of mold is more of a problem if the corn is going for poultry and hog feed, but not if it is diluted with silage and other materials to be used for cattle, Martens said.
Farmer Todnem, talked about the corn mold, saying last Friday that he had seen it developing. Right now it is just on the surface of the corn and it won’t be a problem when it goes through harvesting and drying, he added. But if the weather was to have too much more moisture in the weeks ahead, the mold could sink into the corn kernels, and that would be bad, Todnem said.
“It’s disheartening to have day after day of rain,” Todnem continued, adding that “people get grumpy.” It’s frustrating, he said, that there is a “bumper crop out there and you can’t get it out.”
Martens, meanwhile, said that a fall like this is not “terribly unusual” if people were to look at the records for the past 21 years.
But Martens acknowledged that with the “anxiety” already felt in the population due to the weak economy, having difficult harvest conditions just adds more stress.
But farmers who have dealt with crop problems over the years have either “gotten ulcers” or have become “focused and not gotten too strung out,” Martens said.
“It’s not the harvest season we want, but it will work out,” Martens said. It’s too soon yet, he added, “to throw up the hands” on this year’s harvest.
Farmer Shelley, indicated he learned to come to grips with harvest ups and downs. “In the last few years,” he said, “I made my mind up that I have to deal with it.” said Shelley, who acknowledged last week that he had hardly begun harvesting his corn. He predicted that this fall’s harvest conditions would improve.
If this week’s string of dry days is an indicator, Shelley may be right.
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