13 / 46
2016 Logan County Fall Farm Outlook Magazine
Lincoln Daily News
Oct. 27, 2016
13
into the dead of harvest and everybody is hauling corn
to town and the corn is making into the 200 range as
far as yield, we can go to a grain bin and basically
the only line we have is our own. We don’t have to
worry about waiting on if there is a long line and a
lot of bushels that have to be dumped. If we’ve got a
bin sitting at the corner of the field or even a couple
miles down the road, it kind of makes us a little more
independent as far as dumping grain and it makes us
more efficient on our farm. We can dump it without
having to relying on someone else to be there to take
it. That kind of helps on our end.” Olson continued,
“Or say the elevator closes at seven and we decide we
want to run a couple more hours, we can dump corn in
a grain bin after-hours. It makes it so we can set our
own schedule and move at our own pace if we want to.
Particularly if the storage already exists and you don’t
have to spend the money to build it.”
In the Olson’s case they actually had to rebuild a grain
site once. Blane and his dad, John, have their own
grain facility out by the Elkhart coal mine. “A tornado
actually wiped that whole bin site out in 2009 and
that was the year the crop was real wet and we never
started harvest until like the first of October,” the
younger Olson explained. “They rebuilt and we used
that facility that fall. We have a dryer there so we can
dry our own grain and then store it. That gives us the
ability to play that game with the buyer. If they want
it all at once we’ve got the ability to sell bushels that
are sitting there ready to go and then we can save a
little money drying it ourselves versus paying to have
it done in town.”
Olson’s vast experience with on-farm grain storage
shows in his knowledge. “Another advantage to
grain storage is let’s say I deliver a bushel of corn to
the elevator and I decide I don’t like today’s price,
you have the option to store it in commercial storage
and you pay a fee. But once my grain bins are paid
for it doesn’t cost me anything to store it on my own
farm, outside of labor and management, you know,
utilities and things like that. It’s more cost effective
if you have storage to store it on-farm,” noted Olson.
“In this business, diversification is huge and it gives
us more opportunity to diversify our operation from
not only a pricing strategy but also efficiency and
independence and things of that nature. So there’s a
Continued ►
As John Olson left the site of his nearly completed
new grain bin for the day on Aug. 19, 2009, he warned
workers finishing construction about the coming
storm. When the workers saw it coming about 20
minutes later, everyone dropped everything and left.
Just minutes later an EF 3 tornado swept the concrete
pad nearly clean of all but a fan. No one was hurt.
Photo by Jan Youngquist