O'Connor happy with early beans

KANKAKEE – All of Jeff O’Connor’s crops are all in the ground and he is playing catch-up for a couple of days before heading back out for more fieldwork.

The Kankakee County farmer and at-large director for the Illinois Soybean Association is preparing for the second herbicide application but not before doing some repairs around the farm and completing paperwork.

O’Connor planted his soybeans first, taking advantage of the 80-degree weather four weeks ago.

“I was able to plant two 80-acre fields that week and they came up late last week,” O’Connor told The Central Illinois Farm Network on Monday.

He says emergence was great for the beans as he has not had such early beans look so nice. They did escape the window that closed early last week with frost risk in Illinois.

“As we know, Illinois weather can throw curve balls at us numerous times.”

Since O’Connor held off on corn planting until a couple of weeks ago, none of his corn is up yet but that could change in a couple of days with this week’s warm weather.

“Conditions for planting were exceptional – some of the best I have ever seen,” noted O’Connor. “The only problem starting to show up was lack of moisture.”

O’Connor no-tills his soybeans using cover crops and he strip tills corn. He was happy to see a bit of rainfall in the past 24 to 36 hours, though it was only three or four tenths of an inch.