- We harvested 180 acres of corn for grain, using a combine to take just the kernels off the cob. The average yield early in the season was about 185 bushel to the acre, however some terrible winds dropped the yields in some fields to about 160 bushel per acre from corn stalks braking off, making it impossible for the combine to harvest.
- Taking an average yield of 160 bushel per acre, off of 180 acres, puts the total corn harvested and stored on farm at 28,800 bushel. Today, corn traded on the market at $6.50 per bushel. Not having a feed bill to the tune of $187,200 JUST FOR CORN, makes all the hard work of growing our own crops worth it. It also makes us grateful for being provided with a good growing season, allowing us to take some corn for grain. During a poor crop year, we don't have that luxury.
- There were 6 of us out pulling plastic and tossing tires on the pile on Tuesday. I challenged the group to come up with a guess to the number of kernels of corn on the pile. Guesses ranged from 4 billion to 6 trillion. Based on "Yahoo Answers", there are 72,800 kernels in a bushel of corn, so a rough estimate is that we combined, ground and stored 2,096,440,000 kernels of corn. That's a tough number to read - it's just over 2 billion kernels.
- When we plant corn, we plant about 39,000 seeds per acre. On the 180 acres of corn that we harvested for grain, we would have planted 7,020,000 seeds, with a return over 2 billion kernels or a return of nearly 300 kernels for every one planted! To bad the stock market can't provide that!!!
Anyway, here are some videos of the process we go through once all those seeds get back to the farm.
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