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Altvater claims TCCC’s best yield
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The largest used equipment inventory in the Mid-Atlantic is only a click away. Visit our website by clicking here or visit us at one of our 11 locations throughout MD, DE, VA and PA.
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Altvater claims TCCC’s best yield
1.29.2008
By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor
EASTON, Md. — For the second time in its 56-year history, a woman has won the annual yield contest of the Talbot County Corn Club.
Elaine Altvater of Trappe has done it twice.
She first won the club’s yield competition in 2003 with a harvest entry of 202.94 bushels an acre. She repeated that winning performance in 2007 — a drought year, it should be remembered — with a yield of 168.58 bushels.
As is its tradition, she will assume the presidency of the club, believed to be the oldest continuous organization of its kind in the country, in 2009.
Altvater, who has participated in the club for 44 years, and other winners were honored as the corn club held its annual awards dinner last Thursday, Jan. 24, at the Easton VFW Post.
Wesley Brown of Easton, the 2006 Talbot corn king, came in second with a yield of 159.55 bushels an acre, and Tim Bishop of Carmichael, also a former Talbot Corn Club champion and a national winner in the National Corn Growers Association yield competition last year, came in third. He had a yield of 154.5 bushels an acre.
For Altvater, the 2007 contest was a bit of a family affair. Her grandson, Matt Altvater, was the youth champion with a yield of 164.38 bushels, just four bushels shy of his grandmother’s winning mark.
John Swaine III of Royal Oak was declared the winner of the Talbot soybean improvement program competition with a yield of full season beans of 53.70 bushels an acre.
Largely because of the extended growing season drought, the corn yields in Talbot were well off their 200-bushels-plus marks of previous years.
Altvater, as well as her grandson Matt, planted DeKalb DK50-18 on April 27 in 30-inch rows for a plant population of 27,500. They harvested on Aug. 27. Both supplemented their fertilizer program with chicken manure. She credited her winning yield to “some rain at the right time.” She noted that the Trappe area of the county captured the fringe of some summer rains that moved south of Talbot County, generally across Dorchester and the southern portion of the peninsula.
Brown planted DeKalb 61-22 on May 1and harvested Sept. 29. Bishop planted Campbell 69-36VT3 on May 13 and harvested in Oct. 18.
There were 17 corn entries. The others were Benjamin Brown, John Swaine III, Hutchison Brothers, John Frampton, Gus Schlag and Sons, James Harrison, John Sewell, Paul Shortall, Raymond Harrison Jr., GT Swann and Sons, Henry Spies IV, Paul Harrison, Cecil Gannon and Sons, and Ray Harrison III.
Also participating in the youth competition in corn were Tyler Swann, Henry Spies V and Tori Spies.
Other soybean competitors were Paul Shortall, Cecil Gannon and Sons and the Hutchison Brothers.