Farmer Sense
Rick's crazy soybean harvest
- Hello everyone, welcome to The Farmer Sends Podcast. I'm your host Rick Willard. I am flying solo this evening. Matter of fact, I didn't even say anything to Andrew. I know he's busy with corn harvest. And I am not. I have not done any corn. It'll probably be a week before I get there. I did finish beans Saturday. This is Monday night that I'm recording this. Finished up beans Saturday. Brought the combine home. Dumped the oil. I'm gonna do some more maintenance to it. Did a little work in my shed Sunday, just cleaning up stuff. The Dallas Cowboys did not play until late Sunday night and they did pull it off against the Steelers, which I was glad to see. But anyway, since there was no game, I wanted to watch Sunday afternoon. I went in my shed, did some spring cleaning, had help from some friends of mine that were in town. And yeah, just kind of doing odds and ends this week. Like I said, dump the oil in the combine, going to do some other maintenance. I had a leaky hydraulic seal or cylinder seal on my unloading auger. So I'm gonna get that fixed, but I was just gonna kind of do a little review of what my soybean harvest has been, because I am the king of bad luck and fuck ups. I've had a few things on TikTok here and there, but I haven't really pushed it too hard. I don't know, it just seems like if you got time to put stuff on TikTok, I mean, you should probably be doing other things. So I'm not knocking anybody. I mean, I'd love to have somebody follow me around and record. I think you guys would get a kick out of it, but then you'd see the real me and that wouldn't be good either. Well, only when I'm working on things. And you know what, I don't get mad at my dad. I get mad at myself. God, I can cuss myself out with the best of them. So that's what I tend to do. I just give myself a hard time. But anyway, the last podcast we had, we talked about the Estes XBR concaves that I put in my combine and getting them set. Well, didn't talk about putting the new paddle chain. I guess that's what we call it, the clean grain elevator chain, clean grain chain, clean grain paddle. I don't know what you want to call it, but anyway, mine was missing one of the paddles. We found that out at the end of the season last year. It was actually sitting on the grates in the grain cart. So I had no idea until the end when I was cleaning the grain cart out. So anyway, I put new sprockets, top and bottom, new bearings, top and bottom, new chain in. There's all myself, got it, going, did started on 20 acres of beans and it broke. It's like, you fucking kidding me? Like, okay, why did this break? So, you know, everything starts going through your head. Like, is there something up there that caused that paddle last year, you know, to catch and break off that now I just broke this new chain or blah, blah, blah. So we're close to home. I always like to start as close to home as possible as I can just in case things like this happen. And, but usually it happens far this from home, but this time it actually happened close to home. So just drove it home, no big deal. Got to working on it. Two hours later, I was up and going. What happened, the connector link broke. And come to find out, just talking to the guys at the dealership, I probably had the chain too tight. I found out that you need to pull on the chain on the bottom sprocket. And as long as you can pull it away from the sprocket, it's too loose, but you don't want to pull it away from the bottom sprocket. You want it tight enough there, but you need to be able to slide it back and forth a little bit in, you know, that has those spacers on each side of the sprocket that gives it, you know, a couple millimeter play on each side or whatever. You just want to be able to still have that side to side. So did that, haven't had any trouble since. Tightened it up a couple times before I finished beans, but no, nothing major. Well, a couple hours later, got that put back together, got out of the field and I'm noticing the yield is really wonky. And I kind of expecting it to be that way. We only held one load in the town and calibrated it off of that. And before I even started, I had wiped out every single cow load on the monitor. I wanted to start fresh. It was, you know, this was going to be the year, it was going to be perfect. And I'm usually not off, especially in soybeans. Moisture is always spot on, but, you know, soybeans, it's usually pretty accurate corn, you know, with the test weights and, you know, high moisture, you know, that comes into effect quite a bit. But anyway, the yield was down. It was like in the teens, I was like, I know we had shitty weather in August and September, but, you know, these are some farms I've had for 15 years and they've always had 60 bushel beans on it. Dry, wet, I mean, they're always 60 or better. Let's put it that way. I'm like, well, even this area of the farm shouldn't be down that bad, so something's wrong. So I get out and look, and, of course, I have the sensitivity cranked up way high on my sieves and my rotor loss. So I'm like, you know, maybe I should not have that as high, but I'm pretty picky. I'd rather see something showing up there, no one is working than having everything like bottomed out with nothing on it, you know. So I get out of the combine, I'm looking and it doesn't seem, I mean, there's a lot of head loss, very low potted. So it means this year, very low. So that's unfortunate and a dead order, a cranary aerial to put on the head, it actually just showed up today, but that'll be for next year. But it's a 3162, series two, case IH, Draper Head, works great, I like the 3162 series two, you have to get that one. Because they're a lot like a 3020 header because they have a lot of flex, you know, like almost practically every foot. We had a Mac Don once and I just, not the wrong with the head, it just seemed like you couldn't get the flex out of it. So anyway, I like this head. A lot of people don't, whatever, I like it. So losing some beans from the head, that's is what it is, but I noticed a significant loss on the right side of the combine, I'm like, the rear. I was like, God, I must be overloading the right side. And I had those new concaves in and you had to level everything out and adjust the concave from left to right, you know, and everything. And I did exactly what they told me to. I mean, it seemed to work fine. And I was like, God, something's just wrong. And then I noticed some bean, some soy beans kind of sitting on the front axle and kind of on the side of the combine. I'm like, oh, that's probably from me fixing the paddle chain or whatever, you know, no big deal. So I hop back in and go and like, still not working. It's still like in the teens, I'm like, what the, you know, so I do two and a half acres. And then I'm like, there's no way I didn't close that top hatch on the clean green elevator. Like, and I'm thinking back of my head. I'm like, I know I close that. I put the, I completely removed it 'cause there's a hook, you can flop it back, but you can't flop it back out of the way enough to pull the new chain up. So I had to actually pull the rod out where it pivots, the hinge part and actually take it off. I'm like, God, I put that in there. I remember everything's plain as day. Everything was fine. And I'm like, God, but where are these beans coming from? So I get out again. And this time I'm laying on my back underneath combo and looking everywhere, I'm like, God, the hopper leaking, you know, what's going on here? And I was like, oh, it's got to be the top of this elevator or something. There's a war hole through that you can't see. There's something up there. So I grab a flashlight, it wasn't dark out yet, but it was dark enough up underneath there and I'm holding it up there. I'm like, I didn't hook the latch on the clean grain elevator. So lucky for me, the hopper was not completely full of beans yet. So I could still get to the trap door from inside the combine hopper. And I pulled it open and I'm like, yep. So for two and a half acres, I dumped about 35 to 40 bushel to the acre on the ground. Well, yeah, 40 to 45. Yeah. So that was great. Yeah. So then anyway, we finished that farm. And of course I'm cussing at myself. So that's what I do best. Next day, go to another field and weedy. I've talked about the weeds on my headlines from planting too deep, having compaction, beans not coming up, weeds did. So right, just starting the farm. I mean, you start on the headline, right? So there's a lot of weed in this, just like anything, you know, you're going slow as you can. You hear the rotor pulling down, whatever. And all the, it's, it's slugged. Oh, okay. So I'm sitting there racking back and forth, back and forth, get it unslugged. But then I could smell burning rubber. I'm like, shit, there's a belt. You know, and then all of a sudden my, the tailings comes up, tailings slow, you know, it's worn to me. I'm like, and then it's like shaker pan slow. Oh, man. And they're all run on the same belt. So I get out and sure enough, I got like a fuck pile of pods and shit around my rotor cage and just like packed in. Cause the shaker pan wasn't working. It wasn't shaking anything out. It was just hacking it in. Oh, so I'm pissed off about that. So I get, get it all cleaned out by hand. Cause I couldn't, it wouldn't go. I had flicked up the belts or burnt the belts up or whatever. So I get it all cleaned out, get it going again, going about 30 feet into the beans, clean beans. I went, I didn't go back to the weeds. I wanted to just see what was going on. Same thing, tailings slow the shaker pan all the way. What the fuck? So I get out, sure enough, all potted up. I was like, oh, fuck, I am not, I'm not messing with this right now. I am so pissed. I got a suppose run to the frickin dealer and get another belt cause I burned this one up. You know, and I was tight, you know, I tightened it, but it was, it was maxed where they tell you to put it. And at that point, I'm like, well, the belts probably junk anyway, and there are some cracks in it. I had never replaced it. And the combine is 12 years old. So I don't know if, you know, I'm guessing it had been replaced before, but. So I run to the dealer, get a new belt, blah, blah, blah, come back, put the new belt on. I told dad to go home. I'm like, just, you know, it's like four o'clock. I'm like, fuck it. If we get one, get you loaded, one load, you're gonna be headed home anyway. Cause he, he doesn't see very well in the dark. So he usually quits at five 30 and I'm totally fine with that, especially in being harvest cause I can still fill up my truck. And well, we don't farm that much. So it's like the weather's nice. Go, go home dad, you know, I'll, I'll quit at seven, seven, 30 and I'll go home. So he goes home and it's just me and I get back and I put the new belt on, smoke the fucker again. So I Google it. Why is my 82 30 keep smoking the tailings belt? Well, Agtok comes up. I'm reading some guy at a 72 30 same exact deal. He's like cutting green beans. And there were some green beans on the headland too. It'll get me wrong. So there's green beans in with the weeds. He's like cutting green beans, keep smoking the, the belt on the tailings. One guy's like your return that pumps it back into the rotor, onto the shaker pan is probably plugged. And I'm like, oh, you mean that thing that was in my way the whole time when I was fighting those fucking XPR greats on the right side. You know, if you remember the last episode, I was bitching about this shield from the tailings in my way. Well, I'm like, I bet you that's plugged. I get out sure enough pack tight as hell. I'm like, okay, got, oh, I got to back up. So the previous field back to the XPR concave, when we finished the last 15 acres of the first 35 acre field, I was like, fuck these cover plates. What a pile of shit. Do not put the cover plates on. They didn't even recommend it in the instructions. They said just to leave them off. I recommend it 'cause I was having so much rotor loss and it was just, it was a pain in the ass. But you know what? They're, I fought one of them sons of bitches to get it off while I didn't want to take the concave out. So I was just trying to get the cover plate off. Well, that wasn't funny either. I fought that forever. Turns out I forgot I carry my pliers, a flat screwdriver and a crescent wrench on my side. And I'll be damned if I didn't leave the fucking screwdriver and crescent wrench. I think I left in the combine. So, so that shook out somewhere. And I remember when I took off, I turned around 'cause Ava was riding with me and I turned around. I heard this, the thing, sound. I'm like, huh, Ava. I wonder what just went through the combine. So that dawned on me. So the next morning I walk around for about a half hour, couldn't find them. So they're out there somewhere. But anyway, back to the tailings. All plugged up, green is grass. Fucking weeds, all this green stuff. Tighter in hell in there. No screwdriver to pick it out with. So I'm like digging out with my fingernails and hands. I find a stick and I don't, it was a pain. Anyway, I got it cleaned out. Run's great. Never had a problem the rest of the year. Thank you, Google. Thanks, Agtok. So, finished up that farm. No, we didn't. Another story. Next day, I'm on 108 acre field. It's kind of cut up, weird shapes and stuff. Some CRP, all that. It's a farm I rent. They put in and they actually took out or fixed a waterway that was a big terrorist and they smoothed it out and they had me farm through it this year. Well, it never got a pre for chemical. So it got weedy too. So I'm hammering through that the next day. It's in the afternoon. It was, it was fine. They were, they went, fed through the combine fine. But all of a sudden, my yield is like five bushel of the acre. And I'm like, now what? Now what happened? I backed, I left up the head. I stopped, I left up the head and I back up and there's a fucking pile of beans on my right side. And I'm like, what the hell? What's broke or open now? I get out the bottom trap door on the clean grain comes open on its own. Who's just hanging there? I'm spilling beans out all over the ground. And it did it for probably 300 feet. I don't stare at the yield monitor the whole time. I mean, I watch what I'm doing and beans, this was a new waterway and it didn't get rolled because I rolled my beans before I plant them. And this got done after I planted. So I was watching for rocks and sure enough, yep, open probably 50 bushel of the acre, 60. Almost all of it. All but five bushel on the ground in a pile. So I closed it up, take off. Was it 15 fucking minutes later? Same thing. Oh my gosh. Well, I learned my lesson this time. I tightened up the, I don't know how everybody else. On a case I H, I'm sure everybody knows. You got the U-bolt with the hook and it flops up or whatever. Well, I tightened it up this time, hasn't opened up. Actually, I need to take the screwdriver that I lost that I don't have in my pocket anymore or a crescent wrench that I don't have anymore or I take the handle of the pliers and I have to like literally like spring it open 'cause I got it so tight now. But anyway, no more problem there. Finish that farm. Well, before I finished, I did run a piece of the rebar that people use for their electric fences. Yeah, I jammed that into the cutter bar. So I only busted a guard in a couple knives or whatever, but got that taken care of. Oh, before we even went out to the field, I ran the combine out in the yard and a knife from the chopper came flying out. Thank God, my dad wasn't staying behind the combine. That thing went flinging out and all of a sudden you could tell right away that it was the chopper 'cause you know how lopsided it gets from not having the one knife on the one side and it was like, oh, gee, I don't know what happened there. Just broken bolts, I guess. But anyway, so I know I say so a lot. I'm sorry, I apologize. Back to breakdowns. Finish that farm, get headed back close to home. No issues to speak of on that field or the next. Yeah, matter of fact, I had like three days knock on wood without any issues. I was like, this is amazing. I don't even have anything to talk about. Then I noticed the hydraulic cylinder and the unload auger was leaking. And it, I didn't know how bad it was, but you could tell it was leaking out of the seal. So it has bad seal. I'm like, okay. So I just, I left it out all day. Like I never folded it. I made sure I went around the field, you know, with my right side along the fence. I mean, I did everything I could just to leave the auger out. Of course, I folded it going down the road, but as soon as I unfolded it the first time to unload, I never folded it back up unless it was an emergency. Well, come to find out that didn't matter because bringing it home Saturday and letting it set in the shed. It was in the shed for the first time all year, like overnight it was folded back and there was a huge pile there. And I climbed up on the, or a huge puddle and I climbed up on the ladder of the combine and just watched it drip. It was like one drip per second. So that was part of the reason I had a field fire. Yeah. So dry as balls in Iowa right now. I haven't had a rain since September 19th and that rain was nothing. Yeah. So it means fine. I finally, the last ones I did were like 8.9 ish. The majority I harvested were in the tens. So not too bad, but I was not going to wait. I was going to get them done and I did. But at my dad's place, of course it was windy that day. Dad left, he was loaded. So he took the truck to town. I'm going across the field. And there was a spot where we used to have a waterway that was, it's one of those waterways that's actually taller than the rest of the field. So it's like, why has this waterway been here for like 25 or 30 years? 'Cause it's absolutely no good. So I took it about myself to have it removed like three years ago or it started farming through it. Well, it's still grassy and a bunch of fox tail came up in it this year when it was beans. When it's corn, you can usually have enough canopy. You don't get too much weed pressure. But it grew up pretty heavy fox tail and some weeds. And I get up to that spot, sure enough I slug it. And I sit in there trying to de-slugs, you know, probably there are three minutes, let's say. And no, so there's no dust behind me. I can finally see what's going on behind me. I look behind me and there's white smoke. I'm like, fuck, now what? So I back up turn around and there's three spots about 75 to 100 feet apart that are burning. Of course, the first one's a little bit bigger the second one, you know. So like something's dropping off combine. What is it, bearing, whatever. So I get out, look, I don't, I don't see anything. Like, and nothing's telling me it's a bearing. So I get back in the combine and I start trying to de-slug it and de-slug, de-slug. And by this time I'm backed up and I'm like watching the fire. You're thinking, why the hell are you watching the fire? But what I'm thinking is the soybeans that are down, standing soybeans that are downwind from it, I want to hurry up and get them combined before it gets to them. But I can't 'cause the combine slug. So de-slug, de-slug. Finally, it was just taking forever. So I get out of the combine. I walk over to the one pile, I'm trying to smother it out. I'm trying to, you know, like kick the trash away from it. So it just goes to the dirt. Well, it was too windy, it was blowing embers. So it was like catching more fire. So right away, 911, just like come put the damn thing out. Ironically, that morning I got a call from a fire extinguisher place. And if you listen to our fire safety podcast, we had a couple of episodes ago. I said that my extinguishers weren't filled yet. And then I ended up buying a couple of water ones. They called that morning and said, hey, all your extinguishers are ready to go. And we got your water ones filled up for you with panic freeze. I'm like, okay. Well, I probably should've went and got on that morning 'cause I needed them that afternoon. But needless to say, two fire departments came, Marble Rock and Rockford. I'm right smack dab in the middle. And they got taken care of. But in the meantime, I'm still trying to get that combine on slug. And I'm backed up, you know, watching the fire or whatever, waiting for the fire department. And I noticed there's smoke underneath the combine. So dropped off combine, started another fire. So I back up, I'm watching that one. Sure enough, another spot. It just keeps coming. Like what the fuck? Gotta get this combine on slug 'cause these standing beans are gonna burn up. Finally, I'm like, you know what, fuck it, let it burn. I'm sick of this shit. This doesn't just, oh, and I forgot that earlier that in that field, the center drive gearbox. It's a dual drive cutter bar. The center drive three bolts broke off the front. So it's like hanging and that, of course, don't have any metric bolts out of run to the dealership to get the right bolts for it. And they didn't have the exact one. So they gave me just ones out of the bolt bin. And when I went and tightened one up, I broke it off. 'Cause it wasn't, probably wasn't grade eight or wasn't the right grade. Anyway, so back to the fire. Dealing with this fire thing. Finally, I'm like, fuck it. I grabbed my iPads. I grabbed my phone, just looking for everything that's important to me, or we have the, all those business band radios I talked about them one time. I can't even remember what the hell they're called, Jesus. Anyway, I'm grabbing everything that's important or worth something out of the cab. And I just start walking away. I'm like, just let the son of a bitch burn. Let the beans burn. I don't care what burns at this point. Well, then the fire department shows up. They take off, they like get before the standing beans. All of a sudden, black smokes coming from back the combine. The right rear tire starts on fire. So they run over there and they put that out, whatever. I'm still running the combine. A few things melted. Yes, the right rear tire was on fire. You can read the side of it, the sidewall and everything looks fine. I mean, if it was a front tire, 'cause I got those big LSWs on it, probably won't be running it. But I wanted to get those beans done. And in the meantime, it's sitting in the shed right now and the, I'm gonna have a tired guy come look at it and tell me what he thinks if we need to replace it. And I'm sure insurance will take care of it. But anyway, the fire department gets everything put out. And sure enough, do some investigating. It was from that hydraulic oil that was leaking out of that hydraulic cylinder and it got into some bean shaft. And it sat on top of a hydraulic block. The block where all the lines will come into or come out of. That I assume that was just red hot and it was hot that day anyway. But yeah, just smoldering, started a fire. And then that fire fell down into another little panel. I ended up burning. If you're familiar with the Case IH combines the plastic covers on the side for the rotor, I burnt like one corner of it and the handle on the chopper, for the chopper bar to raise and lower it. Didn't, thought, okay, let's start it up. Let's see if there's any bells and whistles. So we finished the field that night and went and did the last 140 acres the next two days. So no problems. Bringing home, dumped the oil, crawl up on top, opened the petcock on the bottom of the oil pan and had the buck underneath the hose down on the floor. And I said to dad, is like, any oil coming? And it's dark in there. He can't see well in the dark. Nope. Like Jesus should be by now. I'm by now I'm like climbing down the ladder. I'm like, why is there no oil coming? He's like, I don't know, there's nothing. Like fuck, it's probably just dumping out and underneath the engine right now all over that pan on top of the rotor. I'm like, great. No, it was running all down the side of the fucking combine. The whole, the drain hose burned. Yeah, exactly. Luckily when it burnt off, it like wrinkled it up enough so it wasn't running out very fast. Matter of fact, I would have been there all night 'cause it holds 7.7 gallons of oil. So you got a five gallon bucket and that's not gonna hold it. So you have to be there long enough to at least switch the buckets and then you can go home. And then I always come back the next day when things are cooled off and take off the filters and do all that. But like this is gonna take forever. So then I'm climbing up in there, trying to cut the end of the hose off that got melted so it'll run out faster. And then I had a bigger hose, I stuck on top of it. That was long, that would go down to the, to the bucket. But what should have been a two minute oil drain, took about a half hour fighting that fucking hose, trying to get it cut off. You couldn't get anything in there to cut it. I needed a knife that was almost kind of like a hook, like a spatula or something that you could just, not a spatula, but you couldn't get your hand in their sideways to like cut with a knife. You needed something that was just straight and you could like hook it and cut it. Well, anyway, but I finally got it and whatever. So, I think that's kind of the gist. And I said so again, I'm sorry. That's kind of the gist of my fall. And I don't know, do you guys, ladies, men, whoever's doing your farming, do you guys have falls like this, or does it just me? I think it's just me. 43 years old, I'm starting to think I want to retire when I'm 50. I did not sign up to be a mechanic. I know farmers are kind of jack of all trades and we work on our own stuff. And back when we farmed with a couple of other people, everything just went to the dealership. If there was a problem, you called up the dealer, they came out and they fixed it. I'm sorry, but I don't like just giving money away and I don't have a lot of money to give, especially now. So, I like to fix things myself. And I always feel that if I can take it apart, I can put it back together. And I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way. But I'm not into like rebuilding engines or transmissions. And you know what, I wanted to rebuild this hydraulic cylinder that we took off. And it probably would have been fine. I probably could have handled it, but I talked to a friend that said, "You know, they got all those places "have all the right tools and stuff. "You know, snap ring pliers." I'm like, "Well, I have all sorts of sizes "of snap ring pliers and stuff. "I can handle that." And they're like, "Well, but one thing I don't have "is a workbench." Every year, I say, "I'm gonna build a workbench." I have a brand new $800 snap-on vise sitting on the floor in the corner of my shed. Two years now. Every year, I say, "Dad, oh, should build a workbench." I wanna build one of the big wheels on it that I gotta roll around. I want it like a four by eight sheet. That's portable. Not portable where I need to take it outside or anything, but if I wanna roll it over 20 feet this way or 20 feet that way, I can do it or roll it out of the way to clean under it or whatever. But two years ago when I wanted, the guy I wanted to buy sheet of steel said sheet of steel from said it was too expensive and wait for it to get lower. Well, I don't even know what the price is probably the same now, it doesn't even matter, but this winter I need to build myself a bench, but anyway, yeah, I'm curious. Nobody ever leaves comments on YouTube or anything. And if you'd like to leave a comment and just say, if you have a shitty luck as I do, that'd be great. Andrew always says as luck's as bad as mine, but I don't think it is and he's been, he's had a few issues. He had some issues with his XPR Estus concaves as well. We don't know if it's like a wear-in issue, like once the paint gets wore off it worked better or what, but I'd say I was almost two or 300 acres in before I was able to actually set everything the way they said it should be and the way I would have normally had it set with the OEM caves. So maybe it was just a wear-in period. I don't know how many on that too. But anyway, I just wanted to put something out there for you guys to listen to, maybe relate to. I don't know, I know there's some other things that happen, I just can't think of it right now, but yeah, pretty much every day. Yeah, there's always something. I don't, still never did get the yield monitor dialed in, but every single bushel went to town. So every single farm has a settlement sheet and I swear to you, I'm not avoiding telling you our yields, I have not taken the time to just add up the settlement sheets. My dad asked me this morning, so what was your average yield? It's like, did you make 50 bushel, well, hope so. Like, but I don't know. And then I got interrupted, it's when some friends stop by, but I don't know what our average yield is. I know that I had, when I thought the monitor was working right, and here's what I'll tell you about their yield monitor. When you go slow, the yield's low. When you go fast or normal, the yield was high. So when I was going four mile an hour, I was, you know, always kind of in that high 50s to low 90s-ish, depending on the area. Starting out in the morning, a couple of mornings, it actually was wet enough for some reason, or the way I had the angle ahead, I don't know, but I was pushing. So I was going kind of slow, and then I'd go slow in the weed areas. And I know the weed areas weren't a 60 bushel, they were probably 30. But when I'd go like two mile an hour, then I'd have 20 bushel beans, or 30. It seemed like everything was based on my speed. If I wanted a good yield, I just went faster. If I wanted a worse yield, I went slower. There's literally like strip, and I harvested at an angle, and I have strips in my field. A 40 feet of good yield, and then the next 40 feet's bad. And the beans weren't laying down, they were all feeding in exactly the same, but it was because of speed. Tell me that one, people. But anyway, I saw anywhere from single digits where the beans you could tell had been burned up, probably since the end of August. Sand knolls, I have a couple farms that have just lime rock underneath them, look great on top, but it's lime rock below, so no clay for water holding capacity. But it seemed five bushel in those areas, and I saw 90s, and I even saw some hundreds in the last field I did. And I was going slow even. I wasn't going four mile an hour when I saw the hundreds. But I've also had those same kind of yields in those same areas on that same farm every time I have soybeans. So I was curious, and I'm not going to be farming anymore, I gave it up, I was renting it. But I do want to take some soil samples in those spots just to see what's going on. And I looked back to the samples I took four years ago, but they were in two and a half acre grid, so they weren't real close together, or what I would call accurate as a one acre grid would be. But they were high cal areas, like the calcium was in the 4,000 or per millions. And I know soybeans like calcium. So I thought maybe that was it, but I'm not sure. The cowboys, one last night, I can't remember if I mentioned that or not, but even if I did, I'm mentioning it again. Doesn't look like there's any rain in the next seven to 10 days, looking at some more 80 degree days. I was out in the corn field today and some 114 day corn that was planted last week of May. And it's not black layer. The very, very, very tip is still milky. So I need that 80 degree weather for a couple of weeks yet. People are telling me that they're like, well, even though the corn's green, it's still really dry. It's really surprising. And I'm like, yeah, I remember in 2020, I was harvesting 18% corn and it was still green. You're like, you're not telling me anything, I don't know. Matter of fact, some people that we don't, that we were farming with before is wife took it upon herself to sit in the field driveway across the road. And I don't know if she videotaped or took pictures of me out in that field harvesting green corn. That was 18% buying juice sheet. They had no idea what the moisture was. And then got to go to town and tell all our friends and everybody how, you know, Rick's an idiot because he's harvesting green corn. What's wrong with him? He's an idiot. And no, it's called plant health, people. That was the best yield we had ever had on that farm. It was a very good corn. Listen to the high yield growers. They, you want to kill your corn when you harvest it, right? I mean, you want it to be green because you know you're still feeding that kernel. And it's, you could use the word senesce but it's maturing properly. It's maturing without added stress. It's maturing without disease stress, without lack of moisture stress, without lack of fertility stress. It is doing what it's supposed to do. That's how corn is supposed to mature. It's not just supposed to turn brown and be dead. And then you go out there and try to pick it up off the ground and you got stocks broke over here and there and you got to run your snoots, your head low so you can pick it up and that's not how it works. You want some green out there. Not saying the whole plant from top to bottom needs to be green but the top half green with a brown hanging here, not always hanging. Sometimes they can be upright and still be 18% but nothing, nothing around with harvesting green corn. And you know what, those stocks will deteriorate faster if you cut them when they're green and it's still warm out. Come back a week or two later and those stocks will be black. Really, I'm serious. If you harvest, if your corn plant is gold and brown from top to bottom because it died and you harvest it, those stocks that are left are not going to break down very fast. But if you go out and harvest corn that still has green to it and it still has life to it, you will see a definite breakdown. It's like the microbes don't like they're really, really dead shit. They like that green stuff that still has some juice and some sap in it. I mean, well, they feed off of sugars. So, I mean, they go for that. And that's, gosh, I remember it was four, three years ago. Three years ago did half of my dad's farm early was harvesting it at like 22%. There was some green corn out there. Went to do another farm that was drying down way too fast and it ended up being like 15%. It was, it needed to be harvested. It was bad. So we left and went to do that farm. Then we did another farm on the way back. Well, it was like a week later, we get back to my dad's, harvest it. Another week or two later, you could see right to the row of what I had harvested the week before versus the week after it was like the stocks were just black. It's crazy. So I mean, if you're a no tiller and you want stock degradation and stock breakdown, harvest corn was green. Do whatever you can to keep that, keep that plan alive and healthy as long as you can. Keep filling out that kernel. That's what it's all about. But yeah, I can't really think of anything else to talk about. So yeah, it's going to be dry for a while. We're going to have warm weather for a while. It's very unseasonable, but maybe okay. I did order in some calcium. I'm playing on spraying my bean stubble this fall yet with some calcium. It's a 10% from Agrotech. Going to apply that. And I'm not going to put it on my harvested cornstalks even though I want it on there. I'm not going to do it this fall. I'm going to do it next spring 'cause I'm afraid I'm going to spray it on. I'm not going to get a rain and all those leaves are going to end up in the ditch or in the neighbors field and they're going to get all the calcium. So I will spray it this fall if it's still warm enough to run my sprayer and if there's a rain the next day. But otherwise I'm going to wait till next spring when I put down my pre-emerge herbicide for my soybeans then I'll apply the calcium. But I'm trying to get that out there to help lower my mag levels. I want them lower. They're probably right in the wheelhouse that people will talk about and especially agronomists in our area. We'll say if you have calcium and 75 and mag levels in the 12, 15 range that you're doing well. I'm talking base saturation. If you got 75 and 15, that's good but I would maybe argue that point that maybe that mag level should be lower and the calcium can be higher. And there's nothing wrong about getting the K level up either. Get that potassium up. But yeah. Oh, there's all those stupid fucking beetles. God, those stick. And they stink. What's up with them? Why do they have to smell like a gross weed? Oh, yuck. Aren't they gross? I have not had the no-seams bite the hell out of me at this year. But we do have a fly issue. I love to hear my dad bitch about them all day. If you are not in any kind of breeze or wind, like if you're in the shed and the shed doors are closed, flies just all over you. It's nuts. But if you can be out in the breeze, they'll stay away from you. But yeah, they've been crazy. But anyway, I think I'm going to end this. It's been 47 minutes of just listening to me. Sorry about that. Don't have any games or anything to play. I will tell you we have some exciting guests though coming. I'm not going to say who they are but you've heard of them. They're popular. I'm looking forward to it. But yeah, they're definitely going to be after harvest. Might even do something where I put them like all together. Like it'll be me and Andrew and then like three other guests. I mean, do maybe a two hour and we split it up and maybe play some games. I don't know what kind of get like truth or dare. No, I'm kidding. But just kind of ask some questions. Get to know these people a little bit better. But because they're really popular and we don't know everything about them. But I'm going to leave that for that and I'm going to cut this off right now. So thanks everybody for listening to me. I'm sure I didn't tell you anything you didn't already know and leave a comment. Just be nice to hear from somebody. So take care and we'll talk to you soon. (upbeat music)