Poncik farms harvests corn in Long Point in early August. Daryl Poncik is driving the harvester while Keith Brewer operates the grain cart.
LONG POINT — The golden rows of corn were as far as the eye could see along a county backroad beyond the Fairchilds Gin. The dust cloud of hard work could be seen a half a mile down the road with the corn being shelled at Poncik Farm.
Daryl Poncik whipped around the field in the harvester while Richard and Keith Brewer took turns riding alongside in grain carts to transport the freshly-harvested corn into awaiting 18-wheelers.
It was a great year for corn in general, Poncik stated.
“Planting went well. The weather cooperated. We got timely ran.”
Poncik’s crew would be harvesting 12,000 acres of corn this year. He also had 13,000 acres of cotton. But the corn came first.
“This is one of the best years that I can remember in a long time,” Poncik said. “There are places that have done better in the past. But it’s hard to think of too many.
“It was just timely rain.” The only real hiccup in the process was a late surge of rain in early August.
“For the most part everything went well,” Poncik said. “Except for the last few days of rain we got. We should have been done harvesting by this point.” The corn will be used for animal feed or deer corn potentially. Even with a good harvest, the prices are overall down.
“It’s always low price, high yield or high price, low yield,” Poncik said. In Kendleton, corn farmer Aaron Stasney agrees prices could be better. “Prices are down right now,” he said.
“A lot of experts say you may as well just sell it now for what you can get for it. Otherwise, you have store it until the price improves, but storing it creates its own set of problems.”
Still, Stasney said his family’s corn crop looks good this year. “The crop looks better than expected. That’s a good start,” he said.
Phillip Thielemann, an extension agent with the Texas Agrilife Extension Service, said the corn crop countywide is looking good this year.
“I asked one farmer how his crop looked and he said, ‘bad.’ I said, ‘Bad?’ And he said, ‘No, not bad as in bad, but bad as in good.’ He was talking about the good kind of bad.”
August 31, 2020 at 04:06AM
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