Big piles of grain in farm country

This is the time of year when there's a new sight in the farming parts of the state. They're massive piles of grain, open to the air, open for everyone to see. Here's one in Slayton, at the Schmitz Grain company.

But the one is Slayton is just a start. It seems small-time when you travel 8 miles west on Highway 30 to the town of Lake Wilson. Schmitz Grain also owns an elevator here. The company's Lake Wilson corn pile on the east side of town is longer than a football field.

That's about one million bushels of corn. Total value, about five million dollars. Larry Sanow manages the Lake Wilson elevator, he says the corn eventually will be trucked to ethanol plants in the area. He pronounces the area's corn harvest as "excellent".

That's also true around the state. Some farmers are reporting corn yields of over two hundred bushels an acre, well above the state average of 175 bushels. Here's one last grain pile, this one is in Hadley.

These mountains of grain probably will get a little bigger as farmers continue their harvest. They're mostly finished with soybeans, but they've only got about half their corn crop harvested

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