Harvest Begins!

There has been good drying weather the past few days and I tested the moisture level in the field twice yesterday.  The wheat was testing from 14.4% to 16.4%, the dryer test coming later in the day.  As you can see from this pic taken on 7/20, the wheat was drying off well.

So we decided to do a test harvest starting today at 2:00.  Ron got the field broke open and made around 4 passes.  The wheat was threshing well and the wheat was thicker than expected, especially on the bean ground.

My hand tester was showing moisture from 14.4% to above 16%.  This was OK, but a tad higher than I want.  I was hoping the moisture would drop once we finished cutting around the edges where we were picking up a lot of weeds, but it didn't seem to.  I put the dryer tube into the growing pile (so it can be dried in the shed), but also decided that we should stop cutting and try again tomorrow afternoon.  We have a clear forecast until Saturday morning, so it makes sense to let it stand in the sun a little and dry down more.  My friend Brian ran a sample over to the elevator and basically confirmed my readings: 14.4% and a 60.6 test weight.  I was happy to see my hand meter was guessing a tad high, so at least it won't steer me into trouble.  I am using the John Deere SW08120 moisture tester, commonly available on the Internet.