What Harvest?

What harvest?  Wheat harvest!  Leave out the e and wheat becomes what?  What happened is what I wondered as we flew home from Seattle through Minneapolis.  We had a pretty clear afternoon for viewing and I was amazed at the number of wheat fields, the lack of corn fields, especially good looking ones and the severe lack of soybean fields!

What I saw across those 1000 miles really made you wonder how accurate the USDA numbers really are.  A few people I know thought wheat could rally big after the record corn rally last fall but it never happened.  The opposite happened and I saw evidence of it from the airplane.  We saw so many wheat fields across the US yesterday!

This picture from last year in Minnesota is more what I was expecting to see.

I started writing this because I found this incredible and unusual video of wheat harvest.  My favorite is still the Glenvar harvest video in Australia.

Our own wheat harvest here and in this region was excellent.  I hope it doesn't turn out to be the best crop we raised this year.  It was so good our dear USDA sent a special survey in yesterday's mail to see how good ours was!  I wonder how many people got that same mailing?

My dear salesman Leon said he had a wheat for me that yielded 128 bushels per acre for our friend in upstate New York.  After this year's results, I wonder, should we try it?

If you have enough acres, I suppose any acres, wheat is a good rotational crop.  The extra residue and coverage over winter is enough to make it pay if the double crop soybeans or radishes after it pan out.  They always have for me, so I suppose there is no reason for me to not consider wheat.  At today's corn, soybean and wheat price, I see no reason to not consider wheat in my situation.

It's time to order wheat seed and past time to order radish, although it is always a good time to order either one.

What are you planning on sowing this fall?  It's always a good time to sow something.

Ed Winkle