Corn Harvest

I was recently invited to my friend Jent’s farm to see corn harvest. I had a chance a couple of years ago to tag along with some friends for an in-depth view of what goes into planting corn. But that was the year of the drought here in Indiana, so harvest wasn’t very exciting that year and I never got a chance to write about it. The weather has been great for growing corn in Indiana this year, and harvest has been going pretty well for most farmers around here!

Photo by Cris Goode.

Jent’s family grows corn, soybeans, and wheat. They also raise pigs and cattle. The wheat is harvested in the spring, and the corn and soybeans are harvested in the fall. They have grain bins to store about 160,000 bushels of corn and soybeans on their farm. This year, they will harvest around 280,000 bushels of corn and soybeans, so a lot of their crop will need to be sold right out of the field.

Photo by Cris Goode.

As corn grows, the kernels are about 80% water. As field corn matures and starts to dry, the moisture content drops fast. Farmers want to harvest corn around 15-17%. If it has a higher moisture content than 18%, it needs to be dried more before it is stored. Corn that is stored when it is too wet can get moldy and rotten.

Timing is everything. Harvesting corn when it is too wet means that it needs to go through the dryer. When the dryer on Jent’s farm is running, it will use 1500 gallons of propane every day… that adds up fast, and adds a lot to the farm’s expenses for the year. If they try to sell corn that is too wet, they will receive a lower price per bushel.

When they bring corn back to the farm to store, they pull the truck into this building.

The corn is dumped into a hole in the ground, and is then pulled up into the grain leg. From the top of the elevator, the corn goes through one of the smaller tubes into one of their bins or into the dryer.

If the corn need to be dried, it sits in this hopper while waiting for its turn in the dryer.

The corn is slowly dropped through this dryer, where hot, dry air rapidly dries the corn down to around 15% moisture.

After the corn drops through the dryer, it goes through the red tube (at the bottom of the picture, heading off to the left), back into the grain leg, and into one of the bins for storage. Once in the bins, big fans are turned on to help cool off the corn. When it comes out of the dryer, the corn is about 125-150 degrees. The corn needs to be at around 20 degrees to be stored (if it’s too hot, it puts out more moisture, getting too dry and causing spoilage). Those fans work overtime to get the corn cooled down!

If corn has a moisture content of 16-17% when it is harvested, it is too wet to store as-is, but it’s also too dry to go through the dryer. (The dryer will get it too dry.) This corn gets put into a storage bin, and big fans are turned on to slowly dry the corn down to 15% moisture content, and to get it cooled down to around 20 degrees.

Harvesting corn isn’t quite as easy as collecting it all out of the field and stashing it away until it’s time to sell. There is a limited window of opportunity to get all the corn out of the field when it is dry enough, but not too dry. This also needs to be done while the weather is cooperating – our tour of Jent’s farm was rained out twice before we could get there! It is a lot of work… but it can be a lot of fun, too. Baby Doc got his first ride in a combine on this visit. I definitely see more of those in his future!

{Thanks to Indiana’s Family of Farmers for sponsoring a series of corn tours this year. We were given an opportunity to learn how corn hybrids are developed at Beck’s Hybrids, and to see sweet corn and field corn from planting to harvest. I was compensated for these posts, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.}