Winter wheat harvest underway in South Dakota

XtremeAg farmer Lee Lubbers reports higher than expected wheat yields, while heat arrives in Iowa and Alabama.

Lee Lubbers — Gregory, South Dakota

Lee Lubbers is a fourth-generation farmer in Gregory, South Dakota. Lubbers Farms includes more than 17,000 acres of dryland soybeans, corn, and wheat. Lubbers says he is always trying to learn and challenge himself. 

It is officially summertime harvest mode! We started the winter wheat harvest at the beginning of the week. Yields have been really good. It’s a slow go, but nobody is complaining, with the yields being good. We are running our combine, plus our custom harvester is running five machines. We split up into four- and two-machine crews. They have several other crews running in the central part of the state, around Pierre and Onida.

All of their crews have moved up into South Dakota. The next moves will be North Dakota and Montana. By the time we are finished, it will be time to clean and prep to load and head out to jobs farther north.

The pace is nonstop. They’ve come a long way from their first harvest stops, in Texas and Oklahoma, and the harvest push will go well up into Canada. Our wheat has been the best they have cut so far this year. We are crawling along at 1.5-2 mph, but for a good reason. They joke they can count the lugs on their tires while cutting.

We finished up some R1 passes on part of our soybean crop, trying new things to see how the results are. Last year a bone-dry August skewed the data. There was too much variation in the passes to see a definitive difference. Hopefully, this year August will be more favorable. We also just got done doing some corn acres via plane just before tassel. Temperatures have been nice so far for July: many days in the 80s, buying us time on our row crops. Nice growing days, not scorching heat. But we all know the heat is coming. We are more used to 100°F days cutting wheat than 85°F.

We are finishing up hauling our last 40,000 bushels of 2023 corn. We are binning wheat, and also shipping from the field to two different terminals. Wheat goes in one direction, then rock for road construction heads back. We will be focused on getting the wheat crop harvested. There’s a long way to go yet, and moving 400,000 bushels of wheat to take the pressure off storing fall crops in the next 30 days. With decent weather the combines should be loaded up and headed north within two weeks, and trucks will keep on humming. Summertime never stops, and neither do we. Stay safe, everyone.

Kelly Garrett — Arion, Iowa

Kelly Garrett is a fifth-generation farmer in western Iowa. Garrett farms 4,000 acres of corn, over 1,800 acres of soybeans, and 170 acres of winter wheat.

The heat has arrived for a few days, and because of the rain that we've had, our crop looks really good. We haven’t even turned on the irrigation yet, but it appears to me that tomorrow we will turn it on in a couple spots for the first time. Our pastures are holding on okay. We're getting to that time of the year where the brome is going downhill, which is the reason that we are doing the research with the rotational grazing and the other species of plants.

I have been somewhat disappointed in the growth of these other plants, but the reason for the disappointment, I believe, is the chemical carryover: the atrazine from last year’s corn crop and even the herbicide from the soybeans in 2022. I think all farmers need to be aware of the chemical safety of the following year’s crops relative to what chemicals we’re using. The dry weather that we’ve had in 2022 and 2023 has allowed those chemicals to remain in that soil profile longer. I think we’re seeing the results of that in the disappointing growth.

We’re going to stay with this rotational grazing program. We believe next year will be better. We’re continuing to learn, and it’s been an eye-opening experience to watch.

Chad Henderson — Madison, Alabama

Chad Henderson is a fifth-generation farmer in Madison, Alabama. Henderson Farms includes over 8,000 acres of dryland and irrigated corn, dryland soybeans, wheat, and dryland and irrigated double-crop soybeans. When not farming, Chad can be found carrying on another proud family tradition as a drag racer for Henderson Racing.

Let’s talk about the drought for a second. There are a lot of different variables with soybeans and corn in the South. It just depends on whether we got rain or not.

We’ve been in this drought and heat for the last three weeks. We’ve received some rains, but they have not been widespread. There has been some rain here, then you might get rain there, and then you might not get rain for another five miles or so. It’s just really hit or miss.

The planting date for corn this year is really important. A lot of our early-planted corn is going to make it, significantly more than our late-planted corn. This is something we’ve seen a lot in the South when we’re trying to beat the heat. This is our normal weather pattern — we get this heat but we usually catch a good rain around the Fourth of July. When we didn’t get that rain, it really put us in a hole for rainfall this year. So the corn is drying down at a considerable rate because it’s been so hot. Some of our corn will be decent, but some of it won’t be as good.

The early soybeans are in the same boat as the corn. In some places we’re putting fungicide on, and moving ahead with the right program where we’ve got rains. It doesn’t take a lot of rain, just a half-inch here and a half-inch there. We’re moving ahead and putting fungicide on other soybeans.

I don’t know if you sprayed them that they would take anything in. They’ve got the leaves turned over. They’re just in bad drought stress, and they’re actually changing colors and turning yellow — you can see through them. So we’re not going to spend any more money on those until the weather changes and we see the soybeans try to turn around.

But the soybeans that have received rain have good potential. The irrigated soybeans have good potential, and we’ve been keeping the water going — that’s a whole other struggle. We’ve been running about a dozen pivots, and I’m telling you, everyone on the farm has had their work cut out for them to keep these things going. Anyone who has worked with pivots before knows exactly what I am talking about. We are going to keep trying our best and hopefully get some good yields out of what we have. 

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