Spending most
of their days in a tractor going down the field anywhere from 2-10 miles per
hour, going 45 to town is like city people going 80 on the interstate during
rush hour! Surely, I am kidding. Most farmers don’t drive that slowly but if they
are, they are probably checking out the neighbors field conditions and
comparing it to theirs. You see, farmers are very prideful competitive and
want/hope to be doing a little better than the field down the road. Of course
weather, and other factors out of their control have a lot to do with it as
well.
By now you have probably figured out that we loaded up the
camper and pointed it towards North Dakota this week! The drive up was
uneventful. Our route takes us through Sturgis. The rally had ended just a
couple days before passing through and they were busy tearing stuff down.
After a 9 hour travel day we arrived at the farm a little
after 7:00pm and got all set up. DeAnne came out to greet us but "the boys" were
out in the field. A short time later Dylan pulled into the yard and said “You
ready to get to work?”. We were not even there 15 minutes and I was off to the
field. With just over 5,000 acres to harvest there is no time to dilly dally!
They are busy combining wheat at the moment and I was anxious
to get into action! There are basically three roles in harvesting. The combine
driver, the cart driver and the truck driver.
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| (l-r) Big Red (The Case) Ole Yeller' (The New Holland) and the 325 and cart |
The combine driver has the most meticulous job cruising up
and down the field usually at 1.5–4 mph running the head of the combine
within inches of the ground trying to get all the wheat and leave as little
stubble as possible. Eyes glued to the ground, they are on the lookout for
rocks and other obstructions that could get sucked up into the header and ruin
your day. Although it is mainly rocks they are looking for there are other
things that somehow find their way into the field. Things you have to wonder
how they got there like dead coyotes, car parts and this week included a 1.75
bottle of vodka….in the middle of a wheat field. One cannot help but wonder
about the story of that bottle!
The hoppers of the combines will hold between 350 and 400 bushels (21,000-24,000 #’s)
of wheat. Once the hopper get almost full the sensors will turn on strobe
lights on top of the combine. That is when the cart driver jumps into action
and races down the field (at 8-12 mph) to catch up to the combine and empty it
on the go. The cart driver has to pull up next to the combine, get within 3-5’
of the header, match speeds and line itself up with the auger that swings out
of the combine. Seems simple enough and it is until it isn’t. Go too fast and
grain will spill out the back of the cart, go too slow, it will spill out the
front, too far away, it spills out the far side. Get too close and run into the
header….well, we don’t even want to talk about that.
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| Just the right distance from the header! |
The cart will hold about 1,000 bushels of wheat but you rarely
let it get that full. Once it is about ½ full or so you go over to the semi-trucks and dump in there. The scale on the cart logs how many pounds are loaded
into the semi, which grain bin it is going into back at the farm and how many
pounds in total have come off that field.
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| Cart monitor |
The most important thing about dumping into the semi is not
to over load it. The road limits in this area are 80,000 #’s so we try to get
as close to that as possible.
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| Dumping into the truck at sunset (hard to keep windows clean!) |
Once the truck is full, the truck driver is off to the farm where the big auger is set up at the appropriate bin and it is emptied.
Once that is done it is back to field to pick up the next truck. It takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to turn a truck and get back to the field. By that time the next truck is usually full and waiting.
When everything is running smoothly, it goes like clockwork
and everyone is buzzing along. But this is farm life and not everything always
goes smoothly. If one component goes down it affects the entire group. Flat
tires on the semi, broken shear bolts on the auger, broken sickles on the
header will bring the entire operation to a screeching halt. One time I saw
Farmer Bob stop his combine in the middle of the field so I moseyed the cart over there to see what was going on. All I saw was Bob’s feet sticking
out from under the combine and bent shards of metal being thrown into the field
from some mad creature under it. I did not stop as those feet under the
combine did not look too happy. Somehow the fan blades had broken and totally
destroyed each other. Luckily the combine is still under warranty and the
service truck came right out to the field and fixed it. 5 hours later he was
back in business!
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| These fan blades are supposed to look like the new ones in the box Bob is sitting on! |
Another time when Dylan was combining, this "swamp jumped
right out in front" of him and he sunk about 3’ into the mud. Luckily the hero
cart driver (me) was close by to pull him out and take pictures for prosperity!
They just love it when something goes wrong and I am close by with my camera!
In a typical, no issues day they can get about 250 acres done
in 10-12 hours. On the perfect day they would run longer than that but the
morning and evening dew on the wheat affect the combines so we cannot start until about 10
or 11am and have to quit about the same time at night.
As much as we enjoy being up here we are already missing our
home in South Dakota. The week before we left we had made some great progress
at Kevin’s place. He made sure to line up as much heavy work for us to do as
possible as he was going to be alone for the next several weeks.
The week before we left we put in the deck on the north side of his house....
and got the post and timber trusses set for his covered porch.
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| You need a big saw to cut big timbers! |
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| Just about ready for roof decking! |
We also scored on a couple of cattle guards I found on
Facebook Marketplace! We had been wanting some for quite a while and will
install them when we get back.
But that will have to wait a few weeks as for right now we have more crops to harvest and Farmer Bob has removed all the tires from our truck promising to give them back once all the crops are off the field. But for now, it is down the field and off into the sunset!
