Drying Wheat & Barley Efficiently | XtremeAg Podcast

00:00:00 Maximizing your grain drying setup, doing sometimes unconventional things. That's what we're talking about in this special episode 00:00:06 of extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, 00:00:12 and improving your farming operation every week. This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 00:00:20 to help farmers do the biggest job honor. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:29 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ask. Cutting the curve. I've got a good one for you today. 00:00:32 I've got Rudy Berg with Superior Grain Systems, and I've got, uh, our friend Johnny Verell here, and we're talking about drying wheat. 00:00:40 Um, Rodie and I were talking the other day and uh, we had a call and he said, you know what, I've got guys up here in the 00:00:46 upper Midwest, they're gonna use their grain setup to run barley through it. That's something we don't typically do. 00:00:50 We've got wheat problems, we've got some potential, um, uh, grain condition issues because of the humidity. 00:00:57 And uh, Johnny Verell says, you know what, I'm drying wheat this year. So why are you drying wheat, Mr. Rell? 00:01:02 And is this, uh, you know, when, when most people think about their grain setup, obviously they think about bushels, they think about, um, 00:01:08 uh, running as many bushels through the dryer. We cover that, but we always think about corn. We don't think about putting wheat 00:01:12 through this system. Why are you doing it? Yeah, so for us, you know, depending on the year we run the wheat through the system. 00:01:18 And then this year we had so much rain throughout the whole growing system, growing season there, we didn't wanna run into any issues during harvest 00:01:26 because it was already kind of a fragile crop, so to say. So we started shelling wheat as hard as we could, 00:01:31 and we started drying the wheat wheat's fairly easy to dry for us. We have a lot of outside temperatures, 00:01:36 ambient temperatures already high, so we actually just started drying wheat. It allows us to plant our second crop of beans 00:01:42 behind the wheat too, maybe a week earlier. So there's multiple reasons we were doing it. We were doing it to keep the quality of the wheat up 00:01:48 and to be able to plant the beans a little bit earlier. Right. Planting the beans earlier. For you, um, you're in western Tennessee for somebody 00:01:55 that's never listened to us before, is it that important? You're not up against a hard frost typically, um, 00:02:01 before bean maturation, so can you justify it just on the bean thing? Yeah, they usually say about a bushel a day once we're 00:02:07 getting into June there that we're losing, you know, half a bushel to a bushel a day. So that adds up. But also when it rained 00:02:14 during wheat harvest this year, we had just finished harvesting wheat when it rained. It rained for almost two and a half weeks 00:02:20 before we got back in the field. So we would've had rain on our crop for that long. Quality went down test way, all the toxins would've went up. 00:02:29 So for us, we were able to get our crop out and, you know, just blow through it, so to say and, and knock it out. 00:02:35 We've been on this recording for a couple minutes and Johnny hasn't brought up yet. He will, that he lost bushels this year 00:02:41 because he came to my farm in March to record episodes of our hit show the Grainery, and he has to have somebody to blame. 00:02:49 So he is been blaming me for making him come here and record episodes of the grainery that he didn't get out and plant stuff. 00:02:55 And um, I I, I don't think there's gonna be a lawsuit, but I think there, there is gonna be a, a demand for settlement. 00:03:01 Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna get it back, don't worry. But the wheat was not hurt. That was just corn though. Uh, rodie you, you brought up this topic again, 00:03:10 I think anybody in the traditional grain belt thinks of, I've got a grain set up, I got this many bushels, I can uh, 00:03:16 dump this much at a time. And all they think about is running corn through there. And you said this is a different year for you. 00:03:23 It's, uh, it's not the pressure in North Dakota, uh, or Minnesota where a lot of your uh, where where you are. Um, it's not that 00:03:33 they're worried about putting in double crop beans 'cause they don't do that, but usually don't think about running, uh, cereal grains through it. 00:03:39 And you're talking about guys running cereal grains through it because of a completely different set of circumstances. 00:03:44 Disease, disease risk, really, or grain condition I should say. Yeah, it's, It's, it's the high humidity up here especially, 00:03:50 and we've had, we had a late season getting in and then it started raining. Now in the last, well, since the end of June, 00:03:59 it's been storms almost every weekend. And even this last weekend, we probably got another two inches over the weekend, kind of all 00:04:08 around our, our area here. So guys are, you know, talking about drying barley, which they normally don't do. 00:04:16 Um, but yeah, it's just, it is just a different season and guys are that don't normally dry wheat just because you try not to, uh, 00:04:30 try not to to burn the excess propane and stuff unless you have to. And but this year it's the, the humidity and, 00:04:37 and just the conditions of getting in late is, it's, it's gonna be a tough season up here for us. Let's talk about the money part of it. Both of you. 00:04:44 Um, we're not exactly in, uh, we're not exactly in any kind of commodity situation that you can, uh, 00:04:51 be careless with money. So Johnny, you're drying, you're drying $5 and 60 cent wheat. 00:04:58 Uh, I mean if you, if you put more than a dime, a dime a bushel into the drying, I think you're below breakeven. 00:05:07 Yeah, for sure. I mean, you just gotta watch it. But also had a lot of people with test weights go from, you know, 61, 62 pounds down to 52 50 pounds 00:05:16 through all that rain. So a dime to drive versus a dollar $52 dock. I'll take the dime all day long. 00:05:22 And, and for us, kinda like what rodeo was talking to in the mornings, we have to drive by afternoon our wheat wheats dry, we don't dry that wheat. 00:05:28 So we kinda, you know, it doesn't all run through the dryer, it's just that way we can start earlier 00:05:32 and get, you know, get over more acres every day. And we, the beautiful thing about the superior dryer, the one that we're running, it's so versatile, 00:05:40 we didn't have to do anything to it, but it just turned the temperature down. There's no nothing to change on the inside. 00:05:44 I mean, you just basically just type in, put into the, uh, dryer master display that you're drying wheat. 00:05:51 And that was pretty much the setting we changed. Yeah. I wanna get into the setup and anything that a person listening to this needs to know, 00:05:56 know, but back to the other part of it, you, you were, you didn't dry a noon harvested wheat commonly, you, you dried the stuff 00:06:03 that got harvested in the first few hours of the day. Yeah. So if it was over, say 17%, 00:06:08 18%, we ran it through the dryer. If it was under that, we just put it straight in the vent. I see. And we had wheat getting down 10, 11% dry wheats, 00:06:16 you know, in the thirteens. So we were able to blend back out with that wheat too. So it, it just allowed us to get started earlier in the day. 00:06:22 Mainly like rod's talking about when the moisture humidity's high, which where we are, 00:06:25 if the humidity stays high. But, you know, And speaking of high humidity in Tennessee, which is more common than it would be say in North Dakota 00:06:33 where Rod's talking to us from, you couldn't do any of this with just air. You did have to put on the burners. 00:06:38 Yeah, we, we did turn on the burners, but we you turn it way down, you, you can't dry wheat as fast as you can corn or as hot as you can corn. Right. 00:06:45 So you're talking about it, it's on, it's on low, it's on simmer. Yeah. About as low as it could go roadie, 00:06:52 Uh, when you've got your, uh, people up there that are running barley through it. I don't know what the price is of barley, 00:06:57 but, um, I mean I'm doing what I can to support it, but I guess the part here is, um, what's your advice to those guys? 00:07:03 Um, you know, it's the same thing here. Put it on low and, and, and, uh, try and get by with as little as you can. 00:07:10 Yeah, pretty much. I mean that's the nice thing about, um, with that mix flow system is you can run 'em. 00:07:16 Um, we had guys last year that were running 'em, it was 95 degrees outside and one guy wanted to run it at a hundred 00:07:23 degree plenum temperature. I'm, I'm like, how can you, you know, we just go down as low as you can go, you know, and it sat there 00:07:30 and I had lit about 105. So, I mean, you can turn 'em all the way down where they just barely above ambient. 00:07:37 So it just, just a little bit of, uh, temperature rises enough to take the humidity off the, you know, take the moisture out. 00:07:43 You're adding a certain amount of, uh, extra handling. You talked about the dock. Does your grain, I mean, granted, you've gotta do this like roddy's talking about 00:07:51 to keep condition because you've got such moisture induced, uh, problems with the grain. 00:07:57 Do you have to do anything to make sure you're not damaging it so all of a sudden you're, you're not, 00:08:01 you're not hurting the conditions or anything, especially you gotta do No, what we say is just watch your temperature 00:08:05 and keep it low with the mix flow, the way it's mixing the wheat, you're not getting hotspots in it. 00:08:09 You're, you know, it is a consistent temperature going through that wheat and a lot of air flow is key on wheat wheat's real easy to dry. 00:08:16 'cause it's a soft shell. It's not like corn, soybeans. It's, it's pretty easy to dry, very efficient. Biggest thing would be your system. 00:08:25 You know, if you pre-plan, we've talked about this before, pre-planning your system and making sure that whatever handling system you have in 00:08:33 front of or behind the dryer is, you know, handling that product gently. You know, so the days of the, you know, screw augers 00:08:41 and stuff are, are kind of hopefully coming to an end and guys are using more, you know, in mass drags or, or legs something that's not, um, not just hammering that, 00:08:52 that product after you've spent all this time bringing it up to maturity and then beating the p**s out of it. 00:09:00 Yeah. Yeah. So, um, on a money part, what's your other advice I wanna know about? Okay, besides keeping it low, is there anything else? 00:09:08 Because obviously on these tight margins, you know, you're talking about one extra step, there's a little bit more handling there, 00:09:13 there is a little bit more work here, and all of a sudden we're also real close to break even on that. 00:09:16 So I want you to give me any other things from the money standpoint. Uh, before I do that, I wanna remind you if you're listening 00:09:21 to this, if you're watching this, we are talking to our friends at Superior Grain Equipment. Um, if you have a growing operation, 00:09:28 you must think about your grain handling setup. Superior grain equipment, grain storage systems are built to make your job easier and help your grain 00:09:34 reach its full potential. From gentle mix flow dryers to durable storage. Get the flexibility to market your grain on your time, 00:09:40 even visit with the experts from Superior Grain Equipment at Farm Progress Show that's 00:09:43 coming up here at the end of August. Or you can, uh, visit them online anytime@superiorbins.com, superior bins.com. 00:09:50 From a money standpoint, John, you made a good point there. You said, all right, if I, if I uh, lose, 00:09:55 if I lose test weight and condition, um, I'm talking about a buck or a buck 50, was it, 00:10:01 I just threw the number out there a dime. Is it really a dime that it cost you to dry your wheat weight? 00:10:05 Doesn't cost just in gas costs was not nothing like a dime. It's probably just three or 4 cents at the temperature 00:10:11 we were running and the volume. Okay. It's very efficient. You know, corn for us is, you know, in that eight, 00:10:17 9 cent rain depending on the, the moisture coming in. But wheat wasn't. But you know, the other thing throw out there about this, you know, 00:10:24 got the cost of that equipment, but a lot of guys around us started running up fields and everything else because they didn't get the 00:10:30 weed out before it rained. We were just fortunate enough. So you got that aspect too. 'cause we gotta plant a crop right behind those combines. 00:10:35 So yeah, we, just to give you an idea, we ran about two thirds of our wheat crop through the dryer and about a third of it did not go. 00:10:41 So that's, that tells you it's a lot of volume of our, a lot of our crop craftman do it this year, 00:10:47 By the way, this many, uh, because somebody's sitting here running the numbers in their head and maybe they are contemplating whether they need 00:10:53 to upgrade their grain drying setup, your setup. I've been there. If you're listening or watching this, you can go back and watch it. 00:11:00 We've recorded stuff at Mr. Verell's grain setup. It's pretty cool. It's very educational. How many bush, how many acres of wheat did you have in 2025? 00:11:10 Uh, we had right at 3000 acres. Okay, so 2000 of 'em ran through the dryer, 1000 of them did not. 00:11:15 Is that what you just said? Yes. And your, and your numbers were, uh, are we talking 80 bushel, 00:11:21 90 bushel wheat? Would you end up with Yeah, Probably the mid nineties. Mid nineties. Okay. So a lot of, so you're talking 00:11:27 300,000 bushels of wheat. Yeah. Okay. So 200,000 of 'em went through the green drain set up without. 00:11:33 And so I, when you start amortizing the, uh, cost of the equipment, that's the other thing. Rodie, you start amortizing this over the number 00:11:40 of acres and the number of bushels. Obviously there's more than just the propane cost, but when you use this much, 00:11:48 your per per bushel amortization is also pretty insignificant, frankly. Yeah, 00:11:54 For sure. I mean, that's, for us it is. I mean, just getting the crop out, no damage. Even if it saved us 50 cents a bushel average in dock on 00:12:02 200,000 bushel. Yeah, it did hurt. There's a hundred thousand dollars. And then like you said, you also didn't tear up your fields. 00:12:08 You were able to get through that. Of course, you don't know what the weather's gonna do when someone says, well, 00:12:13 how the hell he didn't know that there was gonna be a, uh, you know, torrential downpours coming for a week after this 00:12:17 and that these that the neighbors ended up having getting hung by. That's, that's true. Yeah. You just don't know. 00:12:22 But that's why when the crop's ready, we get it out and having, having a grain dryer that can handle any crop and pretty much any moisture that's, it's a, it's just 00:12:30 as important to our farmers. Our combine is, Yeah. Important. Roddy, what, what advice do you give these people 00:12:36 that are calling you up saying, Hey man, I've never actually run barley through my grain dryer. I've never run a cereal grain through my grain dryer. 00:12:41 What do they need to know? Um, if you've never run, uh, that, that type of product through the dryer, you know, 00:12:47 we're a pretty good asset resource. Um, we've got customers out there that have done it, that if there's certain things that we don't that's kind of 00:12:56 outside of our realm of expertise, we've got resources with our own customer base to ask them, Hey, I know that you guys have done this, you know, 00:13:05 Johnny would be a good example. We run it for temps. What are you running for? You know, air bushels, you know, that we just, 00:13:14 we have resources at our, at our fingertips to, to be able to, uh, rely on 00:13:19 Anybody else is, I mean, what, what else We said barley and wheat. Is there anything else going through these 00:13:24 dryers now that you wouldn't think of? Up here? We've got canola. Ah, you start getting up in the northern part of North Dakota 00:13:30 and, and you know, Canada, there's a lot of, a lot of canola that goes through and that you pretty, the tolerances have 00:13:37 to be very, very tight. Um, that's The biggest thing because the seed is so small, it Flows like water. Yeah. 00:13:43 Right. So, uh, is that typical they need a dry canola? Some guys up here that, that are big canola growers do, uh, we've got, I know two customers, um, 00:13:57 that we have up here up in Northern North Dakota. They're probably 20, 30 miles from the Canadian border. Uh, I think they do enough canola 00:14:06 that they specifically bought the dryer to do canola. They don't run corn. It's canola and wheat. Yeah. That's something you 00:14:14 wouldn't even normally think about. I I I thought it came, I thought it came off. I thought it was like soybeans. 00:14:18 I thought it came off, uh, and was just ready to go get made into oil. No, I Think a lot. I think 00:14:23 a lot of it is, but I think there's, you know, guys, like in situation like Johnny where they have so many acres of canola to get off that they're, they're wanting 00:14:33 to get it out and get it in the bins, you know, you know, in condition. So, Johnny, final takeaway, final thought. 00:14:39 Did any mistakes? Any anything, anything go wrong? Any big takeaways? Any lessons? Like, hey, the one thing I can tell you is boom. 00:14:47 Yeah. Should have started earlier this year. No, I'd say all we put a bigger dryer in than what you want to. 00:14:54 Yeah, I think you said that when we were, uh, yeah. Never Have a big enough dryer. 00:15:00 And from a, from a standpoint of size, obviously there's, there's, uh, multiple, you know, 00:15:08 whatever size operation I guess you have, you've got a dryer to set up for that, right? I mean, the point is, it's all about amortizing it over 00:15:13 certain, over your acres and then making it make sense. That's right. All right. So, uh, Johnny's lessons are, uh, 00:15:20 always put in the bigger dryer. Isn't that like also pole barns, uh, tool sheds, whatever. Everything needs to be bigger. Always. 00:15:26 Always build and dryer sheds. What's that? And your dryer control sheds. Yeah, that's right. You ever notice those? Like sometimes people build 'em. 00:15:35 I'm like, you've got $2 million of grain set up and you, you, you've got your dryer control shed looks like an uh, a porta john out here. 00:15:41 I'm like, for god's sakes, give yourself an extra, an extra 20 square feet. Alright. Excuse me. His name is Rodie Berg. 00:15:49 He's with Superior. If you wanna learn more about this, go to superior bins.com and check it out. 00:15:55 He was joined by Johnny Verell here with XT Extreme Ag, who gave you your big points. Uh, put the temperature as low as it'll go. 00:16:01 Uh, extends your harvest day also extends your harvest season. And as he says, when it's time 00:16:07 to get the crop outta the field, even if you're not following it with double crop beans, it probably sometimes is gonna make you a lot of money 00:16:14 because of test weight, grain condition, a year like this, where that disease is setting in 00:16:18 because of the, uh, ex not excessive amount of moisture everywhere. But certainly we've had a very moisture 00:16:23 and we're hearing this through a lot of the growing parts of the region, uh, of the country. 00:16:27 That is alright. Till next time, I'm Dam Mason. Thanks for being here with uh, me and this, uh, special episode 00:16:31 of Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm 00:16:38 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:16:43 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 445 00:16:49.305 --> 00:16:51.605