This is corn?

Thought I'd show you a pic of what some of our corn crop looks like in my neighborhood here in Northwest Iowa. This was planted to corn last May but two 3.5 inch rains back to back drowned it out. I'm not alone. I lost about 50 acres in about a dozen little low places out of 640 planted to crops. My neighbor across the fence lost 60 acres in one pond. This particular drowned out area is on the far end of a field that's 1/2 mile long and the only way to get to it to mow the weeds is to drive down two rows of corn with the tractor. Most of the corn sprang back up after I drove through it because it's short from being in wet ground too long. The size of this area shocked me, I've never had this much drown out in this field. The field is 60 acres and this area alone is 15 acres. There are two other smaller areas totaling maybe 5 acres that drowned in this field so that only leaves 40 acres to pay for 60 acres worth of rent and crop inputs at $3.35 for current corn. Most of my neighbors in this area are in the same boat. It just shows not all of the corn belt has a bin busting crop. The light yellow tint on the tractor and mower is pollen from the weeds. If I didn't have that cab to sit in my eyes would probably be half swollen shut tonight. Jim

Did you have it insured?

I do have crop insurance at a fairly high rate. All of my acres are lumped together in my policy. Insuring individual fields is too expensive for my tastes. My beans look great and most of the corn is pretty good too. We'll see what happens after it's in the bin. Two years ago this field yielded 190 with no drown out. Every spring when we plant our crops we can only hope for good weather.

Brother about 20 miles from me got hailed on a couple of weeks ago, and this last weekend, got 6 inches of rain in 2 days.

Wet land will produce well in a drought, but drown out in a year like this. I have been thinking about tiling, but mine do better than most around here on dry years.

That's about how mine is, too. At least I can make silage from a
good share of mine. Don't know if any will really be worth
combining. Not a fun year.

This field just happens to be in the bottom of a topographical bowl and is flat . It has tile but the tile is full of dirt because of lack of fall. I've rented it for ten years and so far I haven't lost money on it but crop insurance rescued me a couple of times. Most of the time I make a few dollars. The 190 bushel corn was sold for $7.60 to a chicken farm two miles away. I wasn't complaining back then! LOL.

Whole lot of that around here too.

I was able to plant beans in my 10 acres of drownouts on July
4th, see if they make anything.

Paul

Northern Iowa is next to Minnesota, Land of Many Lakes, right? I have a 40 near Weldon, IL that has a 10 acre pond after 5.5" rain in 2 hours and another 1.5" two days later. Twelve miles north, the same days the 5.5" came, next to another field, neighbors were planting beans with dust flying.