CHILTON, Wis. — Gold corn kernels flowed out of the trailer as Mike Gerner dropped off a load of corn at Country Visions Cooperative near Chilton.

What You Need To Know

  • Dry weather has helped the start of the 2021 harvest
  • The amount of corn and soybeans harvested is ahead of the five-year average so far
  • State statistics rate the about 73% of the corn and soybean crops as good to excellent quality

Despite wet weather Sunday that has slowed field work this week, he’s been generally happy with the end of his growing season.

“Harvest has been pretty good so far,” Gerner said. “The [soy]beans were good, wheat was good and hopefully corn can stay that way too.”

The corn on his farm that’s still in the field has a lot of moisture in it. He’ll wait for it to dry in the field a little more before taking the combine back out.

“I’m probably going to have to take a little break on corn and come back at it in a week and hope the moisture goes down a little bit,” Gerner said.

Brad Jaeger, grain merchandiser at the cooperative, said crops and yields generally look good in east central Wisconsin.

“It’s been a pretty good year all things considered,” he said. “Certainly a big improvement from the last two or three we’ve had here.”

While some parts of the state dealt with drought, it was a little better around Chilton.

“We had a few times where we were getting a little dry, but in general we had timely rains and things went pretty good,” Jaeger said.

While no one knows what the rest of harvest will look like weather-wise, there’s always the hope of cooperative conditions.

“If it could be dry and 60 degrees or so that would be great for the rest of the harvest,” Gerner said with a smile.

Will it?

“It might, it might not. It might get a little wet again,” he said. “We’ll see.”