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Harvest off to a slow start, should pick up

A western Indiana farmer says harvest is off to a slow start in his area.

Kevin Cox tells Brownfield a delayed planting season and ideal growing season have resulted in delayed crop maturity.

“That delayed harvest getting started. Where we would normally like to get up and running, we were a week to ten days late and then crops have still be slow in maturing until about the last week or so,” he says. “Soybeans have been holding leaves and there have been a lot of green pods and green stems, so they’ve been really slow about maturity right here in our general vicinity.”

As a result, he has harvested some high moisture corn.

“We picked quite a bit of high moisture corn to have the combine running and get in fields. Of course, with energy prices the way that they are, that’s been a challenge in itself,” he says. “We put in a new drying system this year and I’m averaging 75 gallons of propane an hour to give you a little bit of a feel for the cost to dry a wet crop.”

The good news, he says, is that yields are looking good.

“The yields have been good and so that’s been a blessing in itself,” he says. “We didn’t know what kind of year we were going to have but yields have been very strong and so that’s been exciting to see that.”

Cox says his harvest is about 30 percent complete and expects it to pick up soon.