OT very, What is the corn doing there?
Even though they've stopped selling fress corn on the cob at my supermarket (and I suppose the other ones in Baltimore) I drive around the country and see fields of corn still standing. The leaves are dried out, the stalks are almost dry, and the ears of corn have dark brown stuff at the top, bigger than a ping-pong ball.
Is this feed corn and they let it dry on the stalk?
My guess is they are trying to lure game in for the season. I know farmers on the eastern shore who always leave a little behind for quail and dove season..
BTW we get fresh corn in the store year around here. I am not sure where it comes from but they always seem to have it. Great in the microwave.
Yes, plus a couple other things. It's cheaper, of course. Controls for grain dryers are electric. The actual fuel for the burners is natural gas or propane. Some farmers use natural air (no heat) drying. They might be waiting for a dryer to catch up. The farmer might have to wait for the field itself to dry also. Equipment can get stuck and the tracks have to be disced in before the next year. The farmer might've not gotten around to a particular field. The last thing is the farmer might be combining his soybeans. Those generally get harvested first.
Yes.
It's field corn aka dent corn, the hard, starchy kernel kind used for animal feed, fuel, and processing into human food. It has to dry for storage, or else it will mold. In a dry autumn, just letting it stand in the field will accomplish most of the drying. If its moisture content is still too high when harvested, it will have to be dried using big propane-fueled dryers. That gets expensive.
In years when the harvest is large and corn prices are low, some farmers will just leave the corn standing in the field. It might stand there for months before the farmer gets around to harvesting. There've been years when the yield was so high the grain elevators in the area ran out of room, resulting in mountains of shelled corn out in the open next to the elevators.
That's not the primary reason but there's nothing like bagging a bunch of big, fat, corn fed gray squirrels...
Thanks and thanks all. My friend who moved to a rural country, Carroll, and takes 90 minutes walks 3 times a week raised this question. And I noticed a lot of this yesterday on my way to buy those posts deep in Harford County. Still, I've always driven around rural areas and I don't know how I missed this. When the top is down, even the stuff which is viewed entirely where the windows would be seems much closer.
I looked up dent corn just now and it's named after the dimple in the top of each kernel, that appears when the corn dries out.
Very intersting. Thanks.
It's been dry here so that's not the reason in this case. But all your other reasons might apply. Thanks.
The guys here in Nebraska don't leave it out there if they can help it. An early snow storm along with a strong wind can make a mess of things. Money lost due to field losses can easily outweigh any savings from in field drying. An article from the Nebraska Farmer discussing it:
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