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Do Farmers Want Another Round of Market Facilitation Payments?

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True Beauty In Minnesota – Duluth

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Celebrating Agriculture with Popular Tour and From the Ground Up

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The Most Un-Ordinary Walk

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Turning 60

When Mother Nature Wins

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Did you know this is how China dries its corn? They spread it along the roads to let it dry.

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That is one great looking ear of corn! Wonder what we do with our corn once it’s harvested? Between 1/3 and 1/2 is fed to our pigs. The rest is sold to a local #ethanol plant for a renewable fuel source. #harvest19

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Harvest lunch provided by Elm Creek Agronomy. So good! #porkchoponastick #harvest19

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Harvest Update: We are about 1/2 done with the corn harvest! YES!
Our days are filled with loooong hours. Corn moisture is coming down slowly. We have experienced some "green snap" in the corn, which is shown in the picture. What is green snap? Basically, we received a high wind event earlier in the growing season, right at the time the growing corn stalk was at its weakest point, causing the stalk to break and die. For the most part, there is no corn ear. The challenge is to differentiate green snap and corn that was down due to another high wind event we had a couple weeks ago. For the most recent high wind event, I need to slow way down and get the snoot of the corn head underneath the downed corn to help it feed into the combine. The amount of green snap differs between fields. The first field was the worst (which is why we harvested it first) and is spotty. Most of it occurs on hills and hillsides.
I will say the corn yields (for the corn that grew) are good. We are half down so we will see if that continues.

Our wet corn holding bin is full so we are waiting on the dryer. Think we may start some tillage until the corn dryer catches up.

All in all, we are blessed and thankful. We are especially thankful for those that are helping us this fall. We couldn't do it without them. Yes, we are tired, but we keep moving forward.

Keeping it real.

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Harvesting Update: We finished harvesting the last main field of soybeans last night. Thank goodness. It was no easy task as the soybean plants were wrapping around the soybean head reel. Our best guess at this point is the soybean stems were not quite ripe. We had a freeze earlier but maybe not enough to kill the stem entirely. The soybeans are ripe and dry enough, but not the stems, which cause the stems to wrap. The stems are rubbery and tough, which is not normal during harvest.
So what are the implications? We had to stop many, many times throughout the day to clear the wrapped soybeans from the reel. What you see is not how bad it was.
So what did we do? We looked in the soybean head reel operator manual under troubleshooting. It said we should slow the reel down, which we did. It did not help. So, we thought, what if we do the opposite and speed it up? Surely it couldn't get any worst as we were stopping 2-3 per round. Sure enough, we sped the reel up and it helped a lot. Along with the sun and temps warming throughout the day we could finally make progress. It was a hard, exhausting day but we finished the field. Now we have just a few small spots of soybeans we planted in areas where the corn drowned earlier in the spring.

With the rain this morning, we will be delayed. We haven't received much rain as of yet so hopefully, with sun and wind, we can get back out to harvest some corn.
Just "keeping it real."

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My dining room table. Harvest meals on the go. Thank you to Evan and #Hefty Seeds of Fairmont for the Beef Commercial meal. We really appreciate the meals delivered to us. #harvest19 #harvestmeals #foodonthego #beefcommercial #thankyou

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Loved working with the 5th graders from Albert Lea Hawthorne school. Very engaged as they put their “Apple Detective” hats on to determine the tastiest apple at Center Creek Orchard @karentoupal

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