update_10_04

October 4, 2006

Last week provided a few good combining days, and a couple not so good. Beans in the area seem to be running well. I hear some yields are up in the 50s where soils have high moisture holding capacity and caught some of the earlier rains this summer. I think the most common yields are in the high 30s and low 40s. Pretty darn good for the year we had. There is no substitute for stored soil moisture. In areas with gravely subsoil, things are not to great unless there is an irrigator on top. Corn did not make ears in those spots.

Things are going well at the plots. The rains have been nice for the winter wheat. The beans should be ready to go next week, and the corn is drying down. I took off a few rows of corn to plant winter wheat. The moisture was around 30. In the process of lining up the plots with the RTK gps system, some winter wheat needed to go a few feet into the corn. Not wanting to fight a lot of volunteer corn we decided to put the corn head on, take a row or two off as needed and then put the last 10 foot pass of wheat in. We take our yields out of the middle of the plots so it will not affect our results at all.

have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager