HUSA Nov 12 2026 – Sunflowers and Wind

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-h5u3t-1bad572

Here’s our co-host David Woodruff with our guest Brandon Roland from Hemingford, Nebraska, talking about sunflowers and wind danger today.

When I was a kid we did sunflowers a couple years. Nobody had pickup reels, and vats on the combine reels, and what there’s something like five and a half, six inches, and he doubled it to about 12 or 14 or something like that, and that seemed to work a little better, and it seems like that was just for sunflowers. Now, using a pickup reel, I guess you don’t have to worry about stuff like that, or do you? What’s your experience?

“Nope, not too much, but most of the time, or 99% of the time, I’ll use an all crop head, and that’s what I use for sunflowers, and normally even if I have a poorer corn crop, I’ll run in with an all crop head as well. Well, this year with the corn being so low for what years that came up, I couldn’t even get low enough with my all crop head. Where I have some irrigated sunflowers in my all crop head, it will just blow through, but thing too, I always get worried with sunflowers, it’s when the wind starts picking up, they’ll shut you down. Where even last year I was, we were in a high, high fire warning, and man, the wind would blow night and day over 30 mile an hour wind gusts, and the fire department nicely told me they didn’t legally shut me down, but they nicely said after 30 miles an hour, they wanted me to be shut down for the day for wind gusts, because if a fire comes, they go, you’re going to be the last one we’re going to be worried about. They go, if a fire comes up, you get a field on fire, we’re going to have to be worried about getting out the county, like you’re on your own, so it’s nice when you have a local fire department like that that will work with you.”

That’s it for today’s Harvest USA report. Thanks again for listening, and may God bless.