After a beautiful week of weather lst week we had 1.5"-2.0" of rain on most of our farms this past week followed by damp, foggy days. The rain was beneficial to the crops, but did not help the disease situation we have been seeing on the ears and stalks. We have been seeing a lot of diplodia on the ears which could make for some quality issues at harvest.

It sounds like the week of the 21st people are going to start looking for fields to harvest. However, the big decision will be at what moisture do we begin. With low prices and a possibility for lower than average yields it will not be economical to harvest high moisture corn, but with the late growing season it is possible that the corn will not dry down and we will have to harvest all of it wet. I heard the saying today if it gets to the middle of October and the corn is not dry then "forget it and get it". We will see.

We have managed to get in some dove hunting with my two retrievers (Drew and Alec). Our youngest also started his first day of preschool this week.

If you are on TWITTER sign into tweetchat.com and type in "on the farm" Thursday afternoon at 3 pm. I will be doing my first twitterview about our operation and Illinois agriculture with Nick Webb from Monsanto.