Wheat in Winter

rusty6 · Nov 30, 2019

Not mine but I drive by this field on the way to town. There are a few spring wheat fields , maybe quite a few, that didn't get harvested before winter hit. I've never seen so many acres of unharvested grain in the fifty years or so that I can remember.

jeffcat · Nov 30, 2019

It is sad when the weather- then high moisture- potential yeild- costs of
fuel,labor,machine wear and tear, and lastly market value. all add up too just
leave it there. Sad.

Russ from MN · Nov 30, 2019

We are driving through Nebraska- Kansas today on our way to AZ and everything is harvested and worked up down here. Where are you that it looks so bad?

cjunrau · Nov 30, 2019

In my opinion it is the sign of greed. To many BTO operations are trying to do way more than they
should. I don?t know any small to medium farmer (under 2000 acres ) who has crop in the feild.
We have in this area a couple guys who think they want to own it all have ended up with over a
1000 acres in th field. 30-40 years ago it would have been cattle feed as most farmers where
mixed farms. It is still a good living and life style to be diversified and have no more than 1000-
1500 aces. I don?t feel sorry for anyone with crop In The field as most is there own fault for
thinking they can take over the whole country. I had one farmer with 12 thousand acres trlll me
they he would never have a crop failure because they had drainage for to wet and irrigation for to
dry. Little does he know that God is in charge not him.

SweetFeet · Nov 30, 2019

cjunrau,

Rusty himself has 60 unharvested acres of grain (I think) - they have had crud for fall weather. I do NOT believe Rusty is a BTO - but one cannot harvest small grains in fields of mud... followed by fields of snow.

I think he is Saskatchewan.

DeltaRed · Nov 30, 2019

IMHO,if this was a greedy BTO,you'd bet they would be harvested.There are many reasons to not harvest. Moisture,weather,prices to name just a few.I have seen grain moisture just hover at above harvest moisture for months.Till snow covers it.In an area where there are no dryers,that is a problem.In our area,onion growers will sometimes haul perfectly good onions out of the shed if the prices fall below the cost of processing/sorting.Sad,but reality.I feel for the guys who cant get their crop out. For whatever reason. Rusty,Do they ever grow winter wheat? Or is it just spring wheat. Steve

muleman51 · Nov 30, 2019

Sure is easy to throw stones from your back porch. Until its your and you know why it isn't harvested. the weather sure hasn't cooperated
this year, machinery breakdowns, family issues, etc.. Shame on you.

37chief · Nov 30, 2019

I see no stones thrown here. Simply a picture of snow covered grain. Stan

muleman51 · Nov 30, 2019

I posted under wrong comment. Sorry, It was meant to address the comment on Greed.

DeltaRed · Nov 30, 2019

We had several fields of hemp here that were never harvested. The THC levels were too high.Those had to be destroyed(disked down). Other fields simply froze early and had to be abandoned.

Bob · Nov 30, 2019

(quoted from post at 11:00:59 11/30/19) Not mine but I drive by this field on the way to town. There are a few spring wheat fields , maybe quite a few, that didn't get harvested before winter hit. I've never seen so many acres of unharvested grain in the fifty years or so that I can remember.

It's not just in Rusty's area, here in north central ND there's THOUSANDS of acres of wheat in snow just like that, and thousands of acres of corn that will likely not be harvested becasue weather conditions made it's test weight to low to be marketable.

old · Nov 30, 2019

Due to wet weather conditions I have a lot of hay that did not get cut. Seems many people had that problem this year be it hay or beans or corn or wheat wet field kept farmers from being able to harvest things

rusty6 · Nov 30, 2019

(quoted from post at 09:20:34 11/30/19) In my opinion it is the sign of greed. To many BTO operations are trying to do way more than they
should. I don?t know any small to medium farmer (under 2000 acres ) who has crop in the feild.

Well you are way wrong in this case.... Maybe there are a few that take on more than their share but generally everybody finishes their harvest here in fall. This is , as i said, about the worst conditions in 50 years and naturally nobody was prepared for it. Sure, if we all had grain dryers we would have been going in September and drying the grain, maybe. In a normal year we don't need to do that so we wait for the weather to smarten up. This year it never happened. it went from bad to worse. If you don't live here you have no idea.

rusty6 · Nov 30, 2019

And regarding big farms, well I farm beside one of the biggest in the area and they are one of the few that did finish their harvest. By calling in extra custom
operators and working in extreme muddy conditions with stuck combines, etc. it got done. Another big farmer only hit the half way mark. Growing conditions made
canola crops very slow to mature. Some were swathed, in desperation, a little too green. That green never came out and it still lays in the swath waiting.
I'm definitely a small time operator and about ten percent of my crop is still in the field. We don't normally harvest spring wheat in spring but this will be the
case. I did not harvest a single bushel of dry wheat this year and it is all downgraded to feed quality due to weather. Its the best I could do. I could go on and
on but nobody wants to hear me complain.

flying belgian · Nov 30, 2019

I agree with Delta on this one. The bto will get it done. He will do what ever it takes. Lease a couple more combines, hire more help. He has the financial backing to do it and his banker will insist on it. However, at the end of the day he will not make any more money then the average size farm. Just bigger numbers. On both the income side and expense side of the spread sheet.

David G · Nov 30, 2019

It has been a tough year, let's have thanks for the ones that are OK, and prayers for ones that are not.

WGM · Nov 30, 2019

There is always a market for low test weight corn.
No one I know of ever abandons a crop.

WGM · Nov 30, 2019

I?m a small operator and still have corn to harvest. No much, about 20 acres out of 600. Waiting no for the ground to freeze.

fixerupper · Nov 30, 2019

(quoted from post at 09:33:41 11/30/19) IMHO,if this was a greedy BTO,you'd bet they would be harvested.There are many reasons to not harvest. Moisture,weather,prices to name just a few.I have seen grain moisture just hover at above harvest moisture for months.Till snow covers it.In an area where there are no dryers,that is a problem.In our area,onion growers will sometimes haul perfectly good onions out of the shed if the prices fall below the cost of processing/sorting.Sad,but reality.I feel for the guys who cant get their crop out. For whatever reason. Rusty,Do they ever grow winter wheat? Or is it just spring wheat. Steve

In my area the BTO's are long done except for one, and even he might be done by now. The BTO's are the hard drivers who will get it done. They have a lot of picky landlords and farm managers to kiss up to.
A larger percentage of STO's still have corn standing though.

Phil9N3667 · Nov 30, 2019

Heard something, looked
up and a combine came by
a while ago to finish
picking about 20 acres of
corn across from my
house. Had duals all
around so he'd stay on
top of the ground.

David G · Nov 30, 2019

You are so far off base.

Most of the BTO's have equipment and staff to be done, the average farmers are struggling.

coonie minnie · Nov 30, 2019

Rusty, thanks for posting. There is a lot of grain to harvest in SE WI yet, too. Snow came early, October 28th, and stuck around until a week ago. We saw the snow plow go by 8 times in the last of October
and first of November- many years that doesn't happen until New Years. We finished the last field of soybeans Monday- about a month later than normal. Elevators are all drying beans, and mine might come out of
the bin and go through the corn dryer if we don't get better weather for bin drying. There are many fields left out there yet. There is a fair amount of corn around the neighborhood to go yet, too- including
some of mine.

I don't spend much time here any more, but I do enjoy your posts when I do look.

Don't feel alone in not being done harvesting. Despite a rather ignorant comment below, there is a lot to do yet in the northern midwest- you are in good company. Maybe it will be green at Christmas!

caterpillar guy · Dec 1, 2019

There are a few of those so called BTO's here with crop in the field. It was wet last spring, dry all summer then got wet this fall. With the late planted crops they didn't ripen at the normal time. So then it got wet before they got ripe. My brother is fighting this right now. He has 70 acres of beans in the field and about 100 acres of corn yet. We keep whittling away as the weather permits. Water standing in fields and they are tiled. We were picking corn yesterday till the elevator shut down at noon. Not going to be open today so have to wait til Monday.
A lot of the local regular size farmers are in the same boat. Got neighbos with acres of beans out and some fields have mud ruts in ,including some of ours.

Wheat in Winter

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