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Wisconsin farmer says crops very good, but no new records

A farmer in southeastern Wisconsin expects no record crops, but very good crops this fall.  Casey Kelleher raises corn and soybeans on about 35 hundred acres near Whitewater, Wisconsin just west of Milwaukee.  Kelleher tells Brownfield his crops look good. “We had a dry stretch there and we had some tip back on certain maturities but otherwise, there’s still good kernel counts. It’s not a record, but it will still be respectable. Beans? It looks like they’re finishing up good. They’re podded up all the way to the top with the later moisture that we had.”

Kelleher says his farm has had timely rains after an early summer dry spell, but now, moisture is no problem after a soggy weekend. “We needed a little, but we didn’t need 5 1/4 inches. And, just to the east of us, I was talking to a guy in Mukwonago (WI) and he had nine inches.”

Kelleher tells Brownfield it has also been a mostly disease-free growing season. “I’ve seen a little bit of sudden death here and there, but nothing very serious.”

And, he used fungicide around tasseling time, which appears to have kept tar spot in check.

Kelleher expects to be harvesting corn before beans starting the first week in October, but he says one of his dairy farm neighbors is already harvesting corn silage with near-perfect moisture levels.