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Crazy growing season winding down for central Iowa farmer

A central Iowa farmer says a crazy growing season is coming to an end.

Steve Kuiper grows corn and soybeans near Knoxville.

“We started out pretty decent in that April timeframe, but we got just a little bit of planting done and then it turned fairly wet for about two weeks. And then we finally got a real run at putting crop in.”

He tells Brownfield with harvest underway, some of his crops suffered from extreme dryness.

“This has probably been one of the driest years we’ve ever had over here, and I’m surprised at the crop we’ve got.”

But Kuiper says you don’t have to go far to find crops that picked up twice as much rain, and corn is slow to dry down.

“Last year at this time we were running really hard on corn, and it was running at the most 20 percent (moisture), and I had friends who were combining corn at 14 and 15 percent last year. The driest we could find this weekend was 22.”

He says recent high winds are helping dry the crop, but Kuiper is concerned about standability.