Since my last post, we have made steady progress harvesting corn. Currently, we are roughly 1/2 done with corn… starting to keep our eye on soybeans now too. As we anticipated, corn yields are lower than the past 2 years. We believe the abundant rainfall in June and high heat during the day/night took the top end out of yields. 
With yields on the monitor reading anywhere between 0 bushels per acre (drown-out spots) to over 250 bpa, production numbers vary widely from farm to farm. I anticipate the overall yield average to be 15-20% below the last 2 years totals. The corn’s moisture is also much lower than last year… 23% last year versus 16% thus far this year. Although we did dry the first corn harvested, much of the corn since then has been dry enough to dump directly in dry bins.
We are currently 1/4 complete with tillage for next year’s corn-following-corn. This year we purchased a new tool for deep tillage. The wet soil conditions over the past 2 years have led to compaction layers in many farms. The new tool will work at a depth of 12″, which is twice as deep as we have worked ground in the past. Thus far, the finished product has been great… with much of the corn stalk residue buried and soil left much smoother. We also invested in a new finishing tool that will be run over the tilled ground.
With the great weather, we have also begun fixing tile holes in fields. When a tile line collapses, a hole will often appear over the line. To repair the breaks in the line, we expose the line, insert a new section, concrete the joints, and backfill the hole with dirt. With the amount of water moving through tile over the past few years, many lines have had breaks due to age and stress. The waterway project is 95% complete. The dirt work, fertilizing and seeding are all finished, but a short line of tile still needs to run through a section of waterway.
My wife, Logan, and I are recently-elected co-chairs for the Blue Mound Fall Festival pork chop dinner. We were fortunate to have the help of many family and friends for the event. We served 900 pork chops, cheesy potatoes, green beans and applesauce to all hungry festival-goers… attached a few photos of Logan and Duane hard at work!