Amen to that Jeff. Our goal has been to set ourselves up so that we can plant our corn in one week, and plant our beans in just over a week. Similar for harvest, except we aim for about 10-15 days for each crop.

As far as planting goes, those are aimed at rain windows and as Plowboy suggested- planting date. Usually in May we can count on a rain every 8-10 days....sometimes more often. Some neighbors are trying to run too many acres with their one planter and it shows in the work they do and when they finish.

There are a few guys stretching harvest. One guy in particular puts 6-700 hours on his one combine each year. He covers a considerable amount of acres with it though.....and gets a new combine every two years. We put 400hrs a year on our combine as pick all the corn. We're looking at it right now as 13-1500 seperator hours is going to be an optimal trading point. We used to run 3 older combines in beans. We get more done faster with two newer combines and one less operator.