Corn yields averaging 282 bushels an acre, with top fields hitting 340, are coming off 150 harvested acres at Future View Farms in Lancaster County, Pa., where Jeremy Railing and Ross Frey are wrapping up their first season farming together.

Harvest started Sept. 17. Despite two stretches of significant summer dryness, scattered timely rains carried the crop through.

"We got the timely rains, just enough to keep it going, and the yields are surprisingly pretty decent considering how dry we were there a couple times this summer," Railing said from the cab of his Case 7250 combine.

The pair farm hundreds of owned and rented acres of row crops. Frey said the rainfall pattern alone does not explain the numbers.

"Jeremy and I can't quite figure out how just spreading the rains out and getting a tenth or two at times is going to put bushels on your top end," Frey said. "So, I think it's definitely some of the management decisions we made that helped get us through that."

He points to foliar fertilizer and stress mitigation products applied during herbicide and fungicide passes as the biggest driver behind the record yields.

"Spoon-feeding the crop in terms of fertility throughout the year, that is not something we had done before," Frey said. "And I think that spoon-feeding is really the biggest driver to some of our record yields so far."

Margin management

Strong yields do not guarantee profit in a year of middling prices and high input costs, and Frey said the partners tracked costs closely. They prepaid propane for the grain dryer back in January, a hedge that should cover most of the crop's drying needs.

On the marketing side, Frey has forward-contracted more than 75% of his corn, adding contracts this month when prices spiked. He is holding back the remainder for stronger cash prices.

"I've plugged in yields and harvest moisture into my spreadsheet formula, and so far, it's looking good," Frey said. "I have all costs for the year figured out. I know for a fact that we're making money on the fields that we've started on here. And that's comforting because we were worried that some of the earliest-planted corn would be some of the poorest performing just because of the drought stress this summer. Hopefully, it all stays good, and yield levels hold true to where we are now or a little higher."

Soybeans next

Full-season soybean harvest will likely start next week. Frey is hoping for 90-bushel beans, though lodging has appeared in some fields.

"They look good," he said. "We've had some beans start to lodge, which isn't the best thing, but it's also not a problem necessarily because you're combining them with a platform head. That just means there's a lot of weight on those stems, and hopefully that means there's a lot of beans hanging off them."

The past weekend's nor'easter should help fill out double-crop soybean pods. Frey estimated 85% of those beans received a fungicide application in August, but he worries recent rains could bring disease pressure as the fungicide wears off.

"As long as the frost stays away, I can pretty much guarantee it will be a record year for double-crop soybeans," Frey said. "We just have to hope that diseases don't get bad."

2027 seed decisions

Even with harvest underway, the partners are already building next year's seed orders — and dealers are calling early with unit discounts, Railing said.

Choosing seed presents its own challenge. Seed companies regularly retire familiar hybrids after four or five years in favor of new numbers with limited local track records, Railing noted, which makes on-farm testing essential.

The farm sets aside acres for corn plot trials each year. This season the pair planted two full plots with more than a dozen corn hybrids, all planted the same day under the same conditions and treated identically. One plot has been harvested; the other comes off soon. Because their air drill is difficult to clean out for plot trials, they source soybean test results from other farmers.

Yield is only part of the selection calculus.

"A lot of those decisions are based upon standability, disease tolerance, drought tolerance," Frey said. "There are some hybrids that went down quicker from the windstorms this year. So, we take notes throughout the year on all of that, and that all goes into decision-making when ordering our seed."

With corn yields holding near 282 bushels, over three-quarters of the crop priced at profitable levels and double-crop beans positioned for a record, the partners head into soybean harvest waiting mainly on frost and disease to write the final line on 2026.