2010 Corn Harvest: Wentworth Family Farms

Here are some of the videos from our 2010 corn harvest. We built a small plastic box to put the camera in. Then, we buried it and ran it over with the combine! Some of the shots turned out pretty good I think. I was hoping those shots would be a little better, but the plant debris covered up the lens quickly. We had a lot of fun making this video and hope you enjoy it too!

The fall harvest has been going well so far. There have been some good yields and bad yields. That seems to be the story for most of McLean County too. A lot of rain in early June followed by five weeks with no rain tends to have that effect! Our "high yield plot" that took second place last year at 286 bu/ac only had 236 bu/ac this year. We were a little disappointed with that, but we will try again next year.

This is a new combine for us this fall, and we have been very pleased with it. We had the corn whiskers installed on the new corn head and have been adjusting those so the combine will steer itself through the field. We have been very fortunate that the guys at Central IL Ag have been helping us out a lot with this new system. I think it's a relatively new system for them too, so hopefully, they are learning about this new technology just as much as we are!

We also installed a Cabcam wireless camera system in the auger wagon with one camera on the combine looking out at the end of the combine's auger, one camera on the spout of the auger wagon, and one camera on the rear of the auger wagon to help us travel down the road a little safer. We are really pleased with this system, but it is super light sensitive. If the sun is behind the camera, it has a great picture.....full of detail and vibrant colors; however, if it is shooting into the sun, the quality degrades a little bit. Next year, we might build a little "housing" around the cameras to prevent direct sunlight into the cameras. The range of the wireless signal seems to be about 50 yards.

We have been able to start combining some soybeans and have been very pleased with some of those yields. One soybean field was averaging 70+ bu/ac. I related seeing that great yield to the TV show Deadliest Catch when the boys are on a bad string and all of a sudden hit a good string of pots! I'll put together a video sometime soon with video from soybean harvest.

Once again, I hope everyone likes the video!

The Essential Alan Parsons Project: Sirius
Chuck Berry: Johnny B. Goode

TW

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Farming Planting
• Case IH
• Illinois Agriculture
• Corn
• McLean County
• Bloomington

[torywentworth]

same corn and beans....just doesn't help when we had 5 weeks with no rain and 80+ degree temps and windy days during harvest!

[isonfarms]

how did you do the camera angle underneath the corn head?

[torywentworth]

@isonfarms thanks for the note! i should've taken a picture of it, but we built a plastic box and buried it. just gotta make sure you bury it deep enough and not in the tire track.

[4440chevy]

dang that corn looks dry for september! In the northeast nebraska area when we are combining 10% - 15% beans the corn is still in the low to mid 20's or like 2009 when it was in the low 20's in december yet! yep, finished in march that year! how long of season seed are you guys using, we have 108 -112 day corn and 2.6 season beans

[yoshi470]

@isonfarms just set the camera in the row?? Pretty easy to do...just make sure the head is up high enough so the snoots dont hit it.

[hendrikkerkhofs]

great shots , I drove through your county last summer, great place to farm

[5525Mike]

Nice job on the video.

[benman431]

I have been paranoid to know the first song and by the way i saw you made this vid and was looking forward to watching it 5/5

[farmer123ish]

nice vid like the cool camra angles

[ThankGodImCountryBoy]

Very nice video, as always.