MOUNT VERNON — Storm damage from the incursion of Hurricane Ike into Ohio was not limited to downed trees and utility poles and wires. Crop damage from the high winds was a major problem for local farmers. The bulk of the damage was to the local corn crop, already compromised by the lack of rain the last two months of the growing season. Knox County’s other major crops, soybeans and some wheat, were not impacted nearly as much by the winds because they grow close to the ground. The corn that was damaged was blown over onto the ground.
This presents a number of problems for the farmer. Some of the damaged corn can be harvested but combines — the machines that harvest the corn — were not primarily designed to harvest corn that is on the ground.
“Depending on the variety of corn that was being grown, there’s a lot of fields out there that have been blown to the ground,” said Troy Cooper of the OSU Extension. “Some of the farmers have had to find a special head to go on their combines to harvest the corn. And they are in high demand right now and hard to come by. But they’ll attach the head to their combine and should be able to get most of what was blown over.”
Eric Stringer of Central Ohio Farmer’s Co-op said the special head helped the corn move through the combine more efficiently under the conditions.
“It’s like a paddle hooked to a shaft on the front,” he said. “It helps pull the corn in. It doesn’t really lift the corn up. It helps meter it through the combine. If you don’t have that it comes through in big chunks instead of smaller pieces.”
With the corn damaged and down, many farmers are forced to harvest now before the corn rots on the ground. Late September is somewhat early to be harvesting corn, but the alternative would be to lose the crop entirely. One problem with early harvest is the corn still has too high of a moisture content — running about 35 to 40 percent — and will require extra drying time. That translates into using more propane or electricity and increasing the cost of the harvest even more.
Priorities also figure into how local farmers approach this year’s harvest. Jim Braddock of Fredericktown is approaching first things first.
“We’ve been working on (soy) beans right now,” he said. “We haven’t started on the corn yet.”
Braddock did have some damage to his corn but not to the extent he has to harvest right away.
“We’ve got some corn down,” he said. “I don’t really know how much yet. You don’t know until you get out in the field and look. I know we have some down but I don’t know how bad it is. I know there’s some places around where the fields are just flat. It makes you sick to look at it much less have to harvest it.”
Braddock said a lot of farmers are bringing in their soybeans now and that yields are down. The soybeans were not damaged so much by the hurricane winds because they are close to the ground. In some cases they are too close because the crop was affected by the lack of rain this summer. The choice farmers with both corn and soybeans have to make now is do they wait to harvest the corn, which has more moisture than they would like, or get the soybeans first because they are not going to grow anymore, and hope they can let the corn dry more before it rots.
“We have our beans over half done right now,” Braddock said. “I don’t know if we’re going to shell any corn right now. Maybe we’ll just wait. With the price of propane, if it doesn’t look like (the corn) is pretty dry, we might just wait. There have been some guys running corn now, though. Some of these places that are down, they want to get it up pretty quick.”
Braddock said the longer the corn stays down, the harder it is to pick up with the combine.
“The other thing is if you’ve got fields that are down, you get sick of looking at it and you just want to get it harvested,” he said.
Dave Mitchem of Centerburg is in about the same boat as other local farmers.
“Right now we’re bringing in beans,” Mitchem said. “Once we get those in we’ll probably think about the corn. If I had to guess right now I’d say about 50 percent is down.”
Mitchem has ordered a special head — which he calls a reel — for his combine to help harvest the downed corn.
“I ordered it the Monday after the storm,” he said. “But it’s not here yet. If the weather permits, I’d like to wait until the corn dries out a little more.”
Mitchem feels he will be able to salvage most of his corn crop but doesn’t know how others will do. He thinks a lot of the crop can be salvaged. It won’t be easy, though. The special heads for combines are in short supply and the corn stalks need to have some integrity even with the special attachment to run through or even be picked up by the combines. If the stalks are too damaged or too wet the corn will be extremely difficult to harvest mechanically.
“It’s just not good to have the corn down,” he said.
