Mother Nature continued to treat Indiana farmers to favorable field conditions over the past week, allowing operations across the state to wrap up harvest and pivot heavily into post-harvest field work.
In Northwest Indiana’s LaPorte County, Denise Scarborough reported crossing the finish line on soybeans early in the week and setting sights on concluding corn harvest Friday.
“We have been able to finish up soybeans the beginning part of the week, and we should be wrapping up commercial corn today if all goes well,” Scarborough says. “We actually had a random rain shower and got three-tenths of an inch of rain in the field they were in yesterday, so they quit instead of running a bunch of wet corn through the combine. But it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day today, and so we should be able to finish up corn, which makes us feel pretty good. I think we have all of our wheat planted now. We plant a lot of cover crops, so those have been going on, and trying to get a little bit of fall tillage done.”
Eastward in Allen County, Roger Hadley notes growers are satisfied with soybean yields that checked in average to above average depending on the field. After finishing beans last week, operations are navigating sticky soil conditions as corn harvest slowly ramps up.
“There are some tilling some ground, but it’s pretty slabby,” Hadley says. “Corn has barely started. There’s a little bit more going this week, but I’ve heard some pretty wet yields because of our late planting. Soybeans are probably nearly 90% complete, if not 100% complete by now. The weather has still been good. Drying has been decent, but slow for corn, so we’re progressing well considering the lateness of what we had. I would say Allen County, and I know the eastern side, is probably pretty well 90%, and a lot of people are putting reports up now that they’re 100% done of soybeans and ready to switch gears into corn.”
In West Central Indiana, Ryan Rippy has all corn and soybean bushels safely tucked away in the bin across Fountain, Montgomery, and Tippecanoe counties. He’s taken full advantage of open skies to knock out fall field chores.
“We’ve been using this beautiful weather that Ryan Martin has given us to get some fall fieldwork done,” Rippy says. “We’ve been doing tillage for the last week, and it’s been beautiful weather for it, so we’re getting close to being wrapped up with that over the weekend here probably. I have noticed, I don’t know whether it’s the higher diesel fuel prices or everybody’s just not quite done with harvest yet, but for as dry of a fall as we’re having, there’s not been a lot of fall tillage done yet. That could be a reflection of diesel prices, I don’t know. We’ve also been using this good weather to get the combine and harvest equipment cleaned up and put away.”
Down in Dubois County, J.R. Roesner reports that local combines have been parked for quite some time, with farmers concentrating fully on preparing acreage for 2027.
“There’s just a little bit of crop here and there out yet,” Roesner says. “For the most part, everybody’s finished up. Everybody’s trying to get some fall tillage done, we’re still working on some cover crop planting and also some fall tillage, just trying to get everything caught up and ready to go for next year.”
