By Jamie Beyer
Harvest has continued on our farm, but after a few weeks of great weather while harvesting soybeans, we’ve had challenges. It was too warm part of the time we were harvesting sugarbeets, and then a major snowstorm interrupted corn harvest.
We finished cutting soybeans about Oct. 1. As we harvested more fields, the yields became more disappointing. The soybeans that were damaged by the hailstorm that hit us in July had very low yields, as expected. But we were disappointed in other fields that had looked good all year. Many of the fields farther from our farm ended up below average, ranging from 2.4 to 3.7 metric ton per hectare, or 35 to 55 bushels per acre. Though we thought we got timely rains late this summer, it still was a little too dry.
Sugarbeet harvest started really well on October 1, as expected. But then in early October it got too warm to pull sugarbeets. As mentioned before, sugarbeets must be harvested and stored at temperatures that prevent spoiling. We harvest them when temperatures are between 0°C and 13°C, or 32°F and 55°F. But when the days got warmer than that, our factory limited the time that we could harvest. For several days, we were only able to pull sugarbeets between midnight and 6 a.m., when temperatures were cooler. During that time, we lost some crop quality. While the yields were still good, the sugar content could have been better, had the weather cooperated.
