00:00:00 Are your grain bins ready for harvest? That's the question you should ask yourself every summer going into every fall. 00:00:05 We're asking it this summer, going into this fall. Are your grain bins ready for harvest? That's what we're gonna cover in this edition 00:00:11 of Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. Welcome to Extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:00:19 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode of Cutting the Curve is brought to you by cloth 00:00:26 where machines aren't just made. They're made for more with a wide range of tractors, combines, foragers and hay tools. 00:00:34 Cloth is a family business just as driven, demanding, and dedicated is yours. Go to cloth.com 00:00:40 and start cutting your curve with their cutting edge equipment. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:46 Hey, welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ice. Cutting the Curve. I've got the guy from Superior Grain 00:00:50 here, that's Dave Welander and Rodie Gel Bird. Roddy's been on before. Um, he and I have bumped into each other at the Commodity Classic 00:00:57 at Farm Progress Show. They're grain guys. They're grain facilities guys, grain bin guys. They're a business partner here of us at Extreme Ag. 00:01:04 And also, uh, they're a business partner with Johnny Rell. Johnny is one of the extreme ag fellows 00:01:09 and also you've seen me, if you've looked at our videos up on his grain drying facility. 00:01:14 He's got superior equipment down in Jackson, Tennessee on his large scale farming operation. In fact, he just put in a bunch of brand new upgrades 00:01:22 to his grain facility and we covered that in a couple of different episodes. Me with Johnny and also me with Brian Adams. 00:01:28 Uh, Johnny does a lot of interesting stuff. In fact, he grabs corn. It's a little bit green because of where he is. 00:01:34 He can capture a bit of a positive basis and put that, uh, put that corn out there early. Well, turns out things dried down fast, 00:01:43 so it changed his plan. This year. He went from 27%, 25% corn to 17% in a matter of a couple of days. 00:01:48 He's gonna talk about that, but that's not the main story. The main story here is how he uses his facility 00:01:54 and how he makes sure he's ready to capitalize on his capital investment that is his great facility 00:02:01 and how you can do the same whether it's old, whether it's brand new. Are you ready for harvest? 00:02:06 What do you think people get wrong? Johnny Verell, when to come? You've, I've seen your facility. It's impressive. 00:02:11 I also saw what you started with, where it was like a 500 bushel, uh, wet, wet grain dryer going into a 2,500 bushel bin. 00:02:20 Maybe I'm off, but it wasn't by far. You started off very modestly and you've continued to expand your grain facility. 00:02:26 You've been, you've used the old stuff, you've patched it along, now you've got the new stuff. What do you think people get wrong when it comes to 00:02:33 their grain facility heading into harvest? Yeah, I would think they, they don't look at it as a piece of equipment. 00:02:39 So a lot of people do all the preventive maintenance on the combines and grain carts 00:02:43 and all the trucks getting all those ready to go. And a lot of times grain bins just kind of get skipped over until there's an issue. 00:02:49 And usually when there's an issue, it's a bad issue. And so I would think a lot of times as farmers, we just take the same amount of time, check everything over, 00:02:57 make sure everything's ready to go for the year. It can really head off some major issues that you can run into because when you start messing 00:03:03 with high moisture corn and fans don't come in or come on or unload systems won't come on 00:03:09 and that corn's just sitting in there sweating. It's never a good thing. And you kind of have to go in panic mode and call people like Roddy at midnight 00:03:15 hoping they'll answer the phone and help you walk through some situations. But I would think that's the biggest thing that a lot 00:03:20 of times, you know, people kind of overlook, you know, getting those grain bins ready to go and having the whole grain system ready. 00:03:26 Both of the superior guys were nodding their head when you said that. And I find it interesting. 00:03:30 I've been around farmers my whole life and when it gets to be harvest time, they get nuts. They get crazy planting time 00:03:35 and harvest time to get nuts, you know, uh, if that planter doesn't work, I could be losing $500 an hour, whatever the thing is. 00:03:42 And my, if my combine's broken down for a day and I can't get a part that's cost me a million dollars, I mean, they get a little overdone sometimes. 00:03:49 You go excited, but you know what? They're worried about a $500,000 piece of equipment that might be broken down for a day 00:03:56 and how much it's gonna cost him yet, if you take a picture of like what Dave has behind him that's modestly three, 00:04:04 $4 million worth of grain facilities set up, yeah, it's down for a day at minimum, right? 00:04:10 If it's down for a day, $4 million grain facility down for a day is a hell of a lot more costly than a $400,000 piece of equipment down for a day. 00:04:19 And I think Johnny's right, it's not because you don't know that the expense is there. It's easy to just say, oh, it's all fine. 00:04:27 I mean, it's like, I don't know, just like my furnace and I have my furnace is fine and that what we're talking about Dave. 00:04:33 Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, and Johnny hit the nail on the head with that. I mean, guys just kind of take it for granted. 00:04:40 Well, you know, everything worked fine the last time I used it. Um, it, it should just be fine, you know, now, 00:04:46 uh, it coming into the fall. But yeah, any, any preventative type of, uh, maintenance that, that these, that you can do as far as just 00:04:56 checking your fans, you know, bump, you don't want to turn your fans on completely when the bin is empty because it, you could potentially knock floor supports, 00:05:05 you know, down that are holding up that floor. Um, that's, that's happens more than you would think where you guys will turn the fans on when there's no grain 00:05:14 on the floor and that's just a huge no-no, you don't want to do that, but you can bump them, 00:05:19 Creates, it creates such a vacuum that it actually degrades the infrastructure in the bottom of an empty bed. 00:05:24 Well, it's just, there's, when there's no weight on that floor, um, the, the, the supports that are holding it up, the steel supports are, 00:05:33 you know, very vulnerable. And these fans can put out, you know, if you have a 20 horse or a 30 horse fan, you're moving a lot of air 00:05:40 and it can tip those supports over and then, then you have a real big problem. Yeah. So I always encourage guys, you know, 00:05:46 just bump your fans, you know, make, make sure that, that they at least turn on, you know, run, you can run your unload your power sweep. 00:05:55 Um, that's, you know, that's underneath the floor. That takes the grain out. Um, because, you know, here's the thing. 00:06:02 Electricians also get very busy in the fall because they're currently wiring up projects that were sold, plus they're getting phone calls from the guys 00:06:13 that already have sites saying, Hey, this doesn't work. You know, this fan motor's down. Um, or can you come and check it? 00:06:20 Or the motor on my unload doesn't work and, and you know, so forth. So it, the sooner the better, you know, it, it's, um, 00:06:28 in the, in the summertime I think was is a really good time to, to take care of some 00:06:33 of those things when guys aren't quite as busy, um, with everything else that they have going on. Roddy, you just talked about fans 00:06:40 and you talked about sweeps. Uh, that can't be everything. Uh, that'd be an easy, that'd be an easy maintenance thing. 00:06:46 What else should I be doing to make sure that my green bins are ready for harvest? Well, not necessarily just your grain 00:06:51 bins, but your green system. So if you've got legs and conveyors, augers, you know, check your tracking on your conveyors, 00:06:58 check your tracking on your legs. I'm, I, I don't own grain bins. What's the tracking mean? Is that something everybody? So 00:07:05 On a, on a conveyor when you've got your paddles or inside of a, a trunk or a a case if you will. Yep. There's a even gap on both sides. 00:07:13 If you're pulling one direction harder than the other, you're gonna end up wearing out a paddle that's gonna be riding on one side versus the other. 00:07:21 So you wanna make sure that that's completely centered. You wanna make sure you got the proper tension on your chains so you're not causing excess wear in that equipment. 00:07:30 Um, the dryers too. I mean, your dryer's part of your system. Um, you don't have to necessarily, um, 00:07:40 run product through it, but you can fire your burner. You can check your fans, check your belts, make sure your belts are good, 00:07:46 make sure they're not cracked. Make sure you have all your belts. Um, I've been to a few sites where, um, 00:07:54 like the fans have four belts per fan set up and they'll be wrong with one belt. And it's like, how long, how long you been doing that? 00:08:03 Well, it's been like that for the last couple years. It's fine. Well, it's fine until it, it's not, yeah. You know. 00:08:10 Yeah. Yeah. I, I would add a little bit to that. Um, you know, dryers are even, uh, you know, outta anything on a, on your bin site with the bins, 00:08:20 any legs or conveyors, you know, dryers seem to, uh, you know, be, you know, prone to, uh, time is not on their side as far as when they just sit, 00:08:32 you know, there, there's so many moving parts. Um, there's so many things that need to be checked over and, and made, you know, made sure that's gonna operate the way 00:08:41 that you want it to and correctly when the fall rolls around, uh, that's definitely one piece of equipment that it's almost a must to, to, to go through. 00:08:51 Um, because the odds of anything just firing up is, is, is pretty rare. And that's a, it's a very important piece of, uh, 00:08:59 of equipment, you know, that you need for your operation. And, and like you'd mentioned earlier, Damien, you're, 00:09:05 you're losing time, you're losing money. Yeah. And, um, yeah, I wanna throw this, I'm wanna throw this at you. 00:09:11 All right, let's face it, you got four combines running. You got a bunch of employees, you've got, uh, 00:09:17 an ag retail business. You got all those tractors you got, you gotta monitor the marketing part of your stuff. 00:09:25 It's easy to just let this go and your facility's new. So admit it, this harvest, you didn't do anything preparation wise. 00:09:33 You just completely neglected it because you said it's all gonna work just fine, didn't you? Yeah, no, we've learned our lesson, you know, 00:09:40 and I mean our system's new, but it's still probably 10 to 15 years old now. Some of it is. So it's, uh, it's got some age on it. 00:09:47 And with that comes a lot of wear and tear in some places. And like Rodeo was talking about with some of the conveyors 00:09:52 and stuff like that, just looking 'em over and being able to head that off before. 'cause I can have one piece of that grain system go down 00:09:59 and it stops all four combines in the field. So it's a big deal for us and know you don't like doing those midnight runs when 00:10:05 you're trying to go get parts and come back and get 'em put together. And so much of the stuff you do nowadays with the grain bins 00:10:11 and stuff, you know, it's, it's so much preventive maintenance can really help you out. You know, you, you got a lot of bearings 00:10:17 and that type of thing that you really need to pay attention to. And every system's different 00:10:21 and everybody has different issues, but so much of 'em can be prevented just with a little bit of maintenance and a little bit of, uh, 00:10:27 upkeep along the way. Most common thing you see Dave and Rodie most common thing, Rodie, you see, I'm guessing, um, probably electrical, probably 00:10:36 because it's, it's outdoors and it, it's, it's high voltage. I'm guessing it's electrical. That's the usual problem, 00:10:44 Uh, on a new system, new system typically, um, because they're not always able to check everything. Um, you know, the electricians aren't there. 00:10:53 Uh, the other thing too is, you know, and as far as the dryer, especially, not necessarily a new dryer, 00:10:58 because we're out there kind of walking 'em through it, but somebody that's had a dryer for two, three years, they're only using it for, you know, 00:11:05 maybe 2, 3, 4 weeks outta the year, then it sits. Mm-Hmm. So a lot of guys, and I've been telling this to a lot of guys now, is, 00:11:13 you know, go ahead and practice on it, you know, a month before you're gonna use it, get used 00:11:19 to running it without any product in it because you're not gonna hurt anything. So it's just, it, it gets to be like, um, 00:11:26 they forget how to run it. Just kinda forget some of the nuances and then I'll get the call. 00:11:32 You know, it's easy to walk 'em through it, but you know, Johnny, you guys had a little issue down there and just kinda, it was electrical glitch, you know, 00:11:40 and kind of walk through it and it's just, there's always something small that, that just pops up. 00:11:47 What about then, um, the, the thing that most people are like, all right, electrical dryers fans, et cetera, et cetera, 00:11:54 for an older facility. Um, I'm thinking, uh, some of the metal, I'm thinking, oh, leaks, I'm thinking stuff like that. 00:12:01 Is that a, is that actually happening or is that not really an issue? Uh, Dave, you go, you're, you, you, 00:12:05 you probably see old facilities. Yeah. Um, you know, it, it, it all kind of depends on, you know, everything has gotten, um, better 00:12:16 through the years as far as, you know, seals and stuff like that that, that, you know, a grain bin is erected with 00:12:23 and you know, base seal and stuff like that. That's where you'll see on a lot of the older sites. Um, that base seal where the steel will meet the concrete, 00:12:32 uh, it'll, it, it's not a matter of of if it's when you know it's gonna wear out. Um, and a lot of times then 00:12:39 I just go along and I just take some, some of that pack Yeah. Stuff and flap it down. Tar. Yep. 00:12:44 Yeah, tar. I can't recommend tar 'cause it's just messy and it's kind of a thing in the past, but there's a lot of new type of sealants out there, uh, 00:12:51 and fabrics that, that you can use to, to reseal your bins. Um, and that's, 00:12:57 that's another way you let guys lose a lot of air flow too. You know, if you don't have, you want that bin 00:13:01 to be pressurized and if you're losing air from underneath it, you mean you're, you're losing air. You're not gonna have full capacity of, uh, 00:13:09 full drying capacity that you once had. Mm-Hmm. Johnny the, uh, last time, you know, when you drive by factories and it says this facility has worked 501 days 00:13:20 with a, without a lost time accident. What's the last lost time, uh, incident you had on your grain facility that caused you 00:13:28 to have to stop dumping? Uh, lightning struck. What did they do? It took out some electrical debris, relays 00:13:36 and stuff like that and stuff like that. You can't prevent, you know, that's one thing roadie mentioned a while ago. 00:13:41 If you can turn that dryer on, make sure all the motors are coming on a week or two out, it gives you a lot of time to figure that out. 00:13:48 'cause you know, it seems to happen to us quite a bit where we are, where we're located, we get a lot of, a lot of pretty big lightning storms 00:13:54 and a lot of trees around that attract 'em on top of all the metal legs sticking up. So it's pretty interesting 00:13:59 how many times we'd get hit in a year. But that's one thing we thought everything was ready to go. We'd actually been drying. 00:14:05 And then I guess around September 1st, we had a pretty good storm come through and took a little lightning hit 00:14:09 and knocked out a few things. And like I said, didn't take a lot of time to get it fixed. You just gotta have somebody halfway knows how 00:14:16 to walk you through what you're looking for. Did you know, did you know it immediately or did you not know it until you went out 00:14:21 and flipped a switch and said, oh, I think that storm that came through a couple weeks ago must have done some damage? 00:14:25 Yeah, that's, that's what happened to us. You know, we, we didn't realize anything, nothing in the office was hurt, just, 00:14:30 just on the grain system itself. So yeah. Most, uh, the thing that you see that rodie, uh, you think is the most preventable, 00:14:37 the thing they're like, good god. Uh, why, why did you, why did you not take, why is this causing you problems? 00:14:43 It should, it's easily handled. Uh, a lot of it is what Johnny touched on the, the very first point is being proactive. 00:14:52 I don't, when I was running our service department, I would get so many calls from guys that, you know, I'm unloading my bin now 00:15:01 and I've got a floor that's partially collapsed. I need you guys to come out here and fix it. Okay. Not a problem. When you need it. 00:15:07 Well, I'm, it's Friday and I'm gonna be filling it back up on Monday with, uh, with this year's crop, 00:15:15 can you guys get out here and fix that? It's just like, you, you, there's some of that stuff can be prevented just by, 00:15:22 especially if you knew about it beforehand. Had a lot of guys that have emptied the bin and it, you know, emptied it in in June 00:15:29 and Yeah, I meant to call you in June, but I forgot. Well, it, it, it's hard to, hard to jump when, when we didn't know about it. 00:15:37 So What about, uh, when we think about, are you Ben's ready for harvest? What do we think the, the thing that you're, 00:15:45 your big recommendation, like if you're doing the public service, you know, remember every, every year, hey, 00:15:51 be sure to do this, this, and this. Gimme my top three things, Dave, I heard from you a minute. Yeah. Um, kinda like I'd mentioned earlier, I would, 00:16:00 I would say definitely check your fans, you know, just bump 'em, make sure that they turn on, um, because there's, you know, they're, they're problematic. 00:16:07 There's, you know, on single face fans, there's, there's capacitors and stuff. There's, there's wear parts on 'em. 00:16:12 You know, it's, it, it, it's something, you know, they're not gonna last forever, right? And so you're talking about leaks, which that's a, most 00:16:19 of the leaks happen at the base, so that's easy. You don't have to get on a ladder, you don't have do any climbing. 00:16:22 You can do that from the ground, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there is potential for leaks at the top too, with your roof fence. 00:16:29 Um, guys have seen that before. That's that sealant that goes up on the top of the roof vent that can wear out over time. 00:16:36 Um, typically guys find that out the hard way. Uh, you know, with spoiled grain on the top, you know, it cross over. 00:16:43 'cause Might, I might to get like some sort of a, a a boom lift out to fix that because, uh, these bins are a little taller than an 00:16:50 extension ladder at this point. Yeah, yeah. You can't access 'em from the top, but, you know, it's not, 00:16:56 definitely not recommended, you know. Well, we always Try to do David all what he's saying. A lot of times we start putting grain in there, it's going, 00:17:03 if it's raining, we'll go out there and walk through the vent. Just make sure we don't have water dripping. Yep. 00:17:07 That's, we can do. Absolutely. If you have water dripping, you know you got an issue and if 00:17:12 not, you should be good to go. So that's something we try to do every year. Just kind of walk through and just make sure we don't see 00:17:17 you visual water coming when They're empty. When they're empty. That's right. Yep. Yep. So that's an easy one. 00:17:23 So sometime, and when you get a summer, a summer boomer, sometime between June and uh, September, 00:17:27 you get a big summer, uh, rainstorm, spend time in your bins, and then once you're in there, if 00:17:33 it's all dry, then you're fine. So that's an easy way of having to get on the boom and go up and find it. 00:17:37 Absolutely. Okay. Alright. Fans, leaks, leaks on the top. Next thing. Um, and then another one too is, is, uh, in your suite, 00:17:47 um, you know, there's typically most power sweeps have two gear boxes. Again, some are better than others, 00:17:53 but it really doesn't matter. They're not gonna last forever. Okay, guys, you get that panic phone call 00:18:00 when you know the, the bin is full. Um, you know, and they start emptying it and, and you know, one gearbox goes out 00:18:09 and they can't get any, get anything out of it. Typically it's, it's, it's gonna, it happens when they get down to the bottom 00:18:15 and they wanna run their sweep. Um, so you can get in the bin, you can't access it, but there's still usually a decent amount of grain in there. 00:18:22 But usually it's a, you know, I have a contract for the rest of September, I have to get this 00:18:27 hauled out by the end of the week. You get to get, get here now and, and replace this gearbox. Um, you know, you, you can test these things. 00:18:35 You can run 'em, you know, before you fill the bin. Turn, turn the unload on, make sure that the flight and everything's spinning in the tube. 00:18:43 You can engage your sweep. Make sure that your sweep goes around. Um, You're saying do that when it's empty? 00:18:49 Yes. Do everything when It's the, the, the sweep, the sweep auger stays in there and gets a a million to tons of, uh, grain dropped on it. 00:18:57 That doesn't damage it. It's just that somehow the electrical part of it does. Well, the gear box is just, you know, it, it, it'll wear, 00:19:03 I mean, it'll, there's components in it that'll eventually Just goes. 00:19:08 So, um, but Rudy, do you Got anything for me on, uh, uh, making sure my bins are ready for harvest? 00:19:14 Uh, one thing that, uh, we forgot about that kind of makes me think is, uh, critters. We actually had a, uh, green dryer last year. 00:19:23 We went out to do some service on, and there was a family of raccoons, a mama, and three babies that were basically inside the conveyors. 00:19:32 We didn't realize until after we turned it on. And so we basically had to chase them between conveyor to conveyor and, and scooted him out of there. 00:19:42 But that was, uh, that was an interesting one. They don't have that problem at Vall Farms. He has an employee named Brian Adams, 00:19:50 who hails from Mississippi. They, they eat raccoons. I mean, I mean, he's, that's like, he, he's, he's, there's probably, there's probably no raccoon problems there 00:19:59 because Brian Amp chases around and shoots him and turns 'em into hats or something. Am I right about that, Jeremy? 00:20:03 Yeah, that's exactly right. Dam. I, I've spent enough time down in Mississippi. I, that doesn't surprise me. 00:20:10 Uh, I'm kidding. Brian's my buddy. Uh, uh, I like to wiser. I take, I'd take a Hat if you wanna send one up here. 00:20:15 It gets cold in the winter. All right, get me outta here. Johnny Rell, we asked the question, are your grain 00:20:20 bins ready for harvest? Uh, you've, you've worked with the old stuff. You worked with the new stuff, now you've got stuff 00:20:24 that's everywhere between, um, and, and, uh, age doesn't really matter. So just making sure you're being thorough about this. 00:20:30 There's a real, there's a real dollar amount to this. There, there's, it's a real, it's, it can be a real cost. Yeah. Our, our grain system's just as important 00:20:38 as the combine itself is. And I mean, without the grain system, when we're having to haul 50, 60 miles to an elevator, we can't operate. 00:20:46 So we use it, it pretty much as our own elevator and we haul out. When we count, it rains. 00:20:50 So the grain system's just as big a piece of equipment for us as the combine itself. Do you have a devoted maintenance guy 00:20:56 that you have a checklist on this? Are you that thorough? Like do you, do you send somebody out there 00:21:01 and say, uh, this, this month through this, this month, through that, Now we usually, it just, you know, as we're running 00:21:06 after about a week, we'll go out and check everything over. Just like today, that's what the guys have been doing. 00:21:10 And then right before we start up, we really, we go through everything and grease everything ourselves just to make sure it's done right. 00:21:16 So We asked the question, is your grain, uh, set up ready for harvest? Uh, this has gotta be a lot of helpful information. 00:21:23 We got good, uh, information here from Johnny Burrell, Dave Lan, uh, Welander and Rodie Joberg with, uh, both of them with Superior Grain. 00:21:31 Uh, they, uh, we've recorded several episodes with them and also I recorded stuff at Mr. Burrell's farming setup up, uh, from his grain dryer 00:21:39 and some of the things they're, go and check it out. Uh, you can also check out all the hundreds of other videos that we've done on these guys farms, uh, that they've shot 00:21:46 to help you with your agronomic, your chemical, your seed, I mean, everything you do. The business side of farming, the 00:21:51 mechanicals, the machinery. We've done it at these guys farms and, uh, it's very helpful. It's all free@extremeag.farm. Go check it out. 00:21:57 Till next time, thanks for being here. I'm Damien Mason with Extreme Ag. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. 00:22:03 Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:22:11 Cutting the curve is brought to you by cloth where machines aren't just made, they're made for more. Visit cloth.com 584 00:22:18.435 --> 00:22:21.415