A Slow Harvest

This year our harvest seems very stop/start! When the weather was perfect at the first part of July nothing was ready to combine and now the crops are ready the weather is changeable. It is a constant dilemma – whether to harvest the crop when it is slightly damp then dry in the shed or wait for the optimum moisture level and miss the opportunity due to the weather. Ideally corn is harvested when the moisture content is around 14 – 16% and we use a meter to test a sample of the crop before starting to combine. If there is a weather window and we need to get on then we will combine anything up to 20% and then dry the crop in the shed or corn bins. Obviously this incurs additional cost so this is used as a last resort. The next problem has been breakages, fortunately nothing major with the combine so far this year but lots of trouble with the dryer and the auger which is used to move the corn from dryer to bin. This is an Archimedes screw inside a metal casing that winds the corn from one location to another.