ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610070024
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GENE DALTON
Any New River Valley farmer who has grown more than a few crops of corn will tell you this has not been your typical season. A cool, wet ending to summer extended into fall and has played havoc with farmers' attempts to harvest their corn.
On the Riverhaven and B.J. Cox and Sons farms, both located along the Little River in southwest Montgomery County, the corn cutting usually has been completed by mid- to late September. Now it's early October and there is still some corn to be harvested, including some fields where the crop has been too green to cut because of the cool, damp weather.
Jerry Hale of Christiansburg, a salesman for the Pioneer Seed Co., is also having a hard time because of the weather.
He uses farms around the region to grow corn from Pioneer and other seed companies. He then evaluates his company's hybrids against the competitors to see which is doing the best. Hale |GENE DALTON/Staff Tim Rutherford, an employee at Riverhaven Farm, opens the tailgate on a truck as it dumps its load of silage onto the conveyer.
Photo- Gene Dalton
has been using the B.J. Cox and Sons Farm as a testing site for a couple of years. "It was wet when we planted and now it's wet when we cut it," Hale said. "But this is a good crop year. ... It's just getting it in that's been the problem." The 12-foot-high cornstalks along the Little River are evidence of a good growing year.
The Cox family and the Phillips family at Riverhaven, both dairy farmers, have had problems with their trucks getting stuck in the muddy cornfields the past two weeks, but they know there's little to grumble about. They feel much more fortunate than farmers in the other parts of the state who had crops destroyed by Hurricane Fran. Hale lost some of his test crops in those floods.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Gene Dalton. 1. A truck collects corn as it is choppedby CNBon Riverhaven Farm in Montgomery County (ran on NRV-1). 2. Corn
cutting begins on a large field as tractor and trucks begin their
clockwise routes on the Cox Farm. 3. A truck
full of chopped corn (above) backs up to a conveyer that will move
the corn to
the top of the Riverhaven silos where most of this year's corn crop
will be stored. 4. Jerry Hale, of Pioneer Seed, gets farmer Wayne
Cox (right) to hold
a sign as he photographs one of his test rows. 5. When the milk line
(where the dark part meets the lighter part of the kernal) comes
half way up the kernal,
t is the best time to harvest. 6. Allen Phillips operates the
chopper from the enclosed tractor as his father Cline follows in the
truck. color. 7. Tim Rutherford, an employee at Riverhaven Farm,
opens the tailgate on a truck as it dumps its load of silage onto
the conveyer.