West Alton, MO

I went to West Alton, MO to participate in a field day put on by Saale Farm and Grain. It was nice to get out of town and see what is going on in the farming world. I saw a few wagons and trucks lined up at OK Grain in Litchfield, so I am led to believe that a few people are harvesting corn. I saw lots of mature corn as shown in the picture below. The earliest way to determine if corn is mature is to pull and ear and see if it has blacklayered. As it mature further the ears start to point down. At that point you can say it is mature without checking the black layer. We did here a report that one farmer was harvesting corn at 17 to 19% moisture. He was making around 200 bushels per acre. I heard another report that corn was being harvested around Medora, IL. It seems a lot of people are waiting to harvest dry corn. That should drive down the demand for propane and hopefully the price as well.
I saw the below field of soybeans starting to yellow. These beans were probably planted in April. It looks fairly even, so I am not suspecting SDS. I have been reading lots of reports of SDS in Northern Illinois and Iowa. The beans we saw at the field day were well podded and filling nicely.