Wheat Time!

 So much going on, so little time to write about it. We have been busy harvesting wheat this week with several long days between 12-16 hours. On a good day, with both combines going and no troubles we can get about 300 acres done. If a combine breaks down, things slow down to a snail's pace. At least it seems that way. 

There are a couple of wheat fields ready, a few more still have some green in them, and green is no good when it comes to harvesting wheat. And I am not talking totally green, just hints of green. Chris can drive by a wheat field at 50mph and say, "Too green". To me it looks the perfect golden you want a wheat field, but to the experienced eye, or when you really slow down there is definitely some green in it. The one on the left is ready, the one on the right has a lot of green. 

We typically cannot get into the field until 11am or later depending on the previous night's dew which makes it tough to cut. This means we go late into the night, 10, 11pm or even a little later until the dew settles in again. 

I have been kicked out of the cart and have been trucking this week. Not my favorite job as it is nonstop going and there is a more stress as the whole operation is dependent on you dumping the truck and getting back before the other truck is full and everything comes to a standstill. We bring two semis out to the field, once one is full, I drive it back to the farm and dump it into an auger which carries it up to the top of the bin and dumps it in. Meanwhile, out in the field the other truck is being filled. I think the bin below will hold 50 truckloads. The last field we did was about 5-6 miles away and it took me about 40 minutes to do "a turn", by then the other truck is often full so I just jump in that truck and do it over, and over, and over again a l l d a y long. Lord help me should a shear bolt break on the auger I am using at the farm to empty the trucks as that take precious time to fix. Or worse yet, the bin gets full and you have to move the auger.

If we really get into a tight spot, Ty or Dylan can help with the trucking, but their time is better used someplace else. I did have to call for reinforcements a couple times when both trucks were full and there was no way I could keep up. In a way, that is good news as it means a good harvest and unlike the peas, the wheat is doing a little better than anticipated. 

Bob S arrived on Monday and took over the carting duties, so we have an extra man in the field which is very helpful. Meals are delivered to us in the field by Holly or Sydney, they do their best to accommodate our pickiness, but you are so hungry and thankful for food, I would eat just about anything. These two are excellent cooks though and everything is delicious! Sydney texted me the other day asking me what vegetables I wanted in my chicken pot. I said, "anything except carrots, peas, and green beans, unless they are French cut green beans then I would eat them." I am pretty sure she was thinking that there is nothing left to put into a chicken pot pie, but she texted back and asked if I like corn. "YES!" It is on the right below, on the left is Holly's homemade pizza which we look forward to every Friday night, both were delicious!

I was not sure how one makes a chicken pot pie with only corn, but she did it! She is self-admittedly an inexperienced cook living on mostly prepared and air fryer food until her marriage last month. Now she is trying to expand her horizons and is doing a very good job. 

Everything was going very smoothly until it started raining. Farmers pray for rain during the growing season, yet curse it during harvest, then pray for it again after. Never happy these farmers. Even a little bit of rain brings the harvest for a standstill for 1, sometimes 2 days. So far, we have had three days of rain with more in the forecast. Not good when Bob S and I are only here for a limited time and we need to get the crops in.  

We still kept busy all day, cleaning and organizing the shop and other areas of the farm where stuff has accumulated for years. We pulled stuff out that has been there for decades. There were parts for combines and tractors that have been gone for years. Threw some away, organized a bunch and listed a lot of items for sale. 

I also "got" to clean a couple more bins and there is always maintenance on the combines like replacing broken sickle blades.

I spent 4 hours cleaning downed trees in one field. These were from one of the windstorms in the summer, but you cannot get to them while the crops are up. Once we harvested this field, we were able to get to the trees. These trees were probably 30 years old and overnight 15 of them were on the ground. 

The rain also allowed us to get out for a group lunch for Dylan's birthday, he turned 30 this week! We also played poker one night with the gang here on the farm and a few others. Farmer Bob even got in on the action!

Back home Barb has had another rough week. No wasp stings thankfully, but she did pick up a bug somewhere resulting in 3 days of a flu-like illness. Achey, chills, and the rest of it accompanied with little sleep thanks to potty training Ms. Maisie does not make for a happy Barb.  

She is making headway with Maisie though as earlier this week Maisie actually started going to the door when she needed to go to the bathroom! That is a big-time win!

Maisie has a new favorite spot in the house. She loves to lay down under the half-barrel table next to Barb's chair.

Barb had two traumatic experiences this week. Well, three if you count her illness.  Both were before she was sick at least. I even got to witness the first one. It was 2:30 in the morning and the camera alarms around the house went off on my phone waking me up. I looked to see if it was Barb's boyfriend sneaking off or what, but when I looked all I saw was Barb carrying Maisie around the house. Apparently, Maisie had to go to the potty and when Barb brought her out the sliding door, the latch was in such a position that it flipped over locking Barb out of the house! 

She went around to all the other doors checking to see if she had left any of them unlocked, she had not. She finally found a window that was unlatched, pried the screen off, opened the window, set Maisie through the window and crawled in herself. That is one way to wake up for the day! I captured this screenshot off one of the cameras. 

The second incident caused a flurry of phone calls to me in a short period of time when a huge snake decided to make an appearance right outside the door. At first she called me to identify the snake. Through a series of questions we were able to determine it was not a rattle snake but a harmless bullsnake. She was still questioning whether she should kill it or not as she was afraid of it biting one of her precious puppies. This thing was huge measuring close to 5'!

I finally convinced to just to shoo it away which resulted in a couple more phone calls when the snake became aggressive and started striking at her. She finally got it to go away, but it came back 5 minutes later, she did this not only once, not only twice, but three times! It even crawled up the birdfeeder tree, no doubt smelling the squirrel that is always hanging around. It finally crawled down that drainpipe I showed a couple weeks ago giving Barb no peace of mind at all. She has not seen it since. 

She only made two videos this week for your viewing pleasure, but one of them was of Dakota playing. A rare sight indeed!

The girls spend a lot of time out in the gazebo, they all just love being outside. 

We received a bit of bad news notifying us that our friend Jim from back in Wisconsin passed away. Barb and his wife Melanie were (and still are) best buds back in the horsing days. Jim and I became good friends and still talked once a month or so. He is going to be missed, rest in peace buddy. 

That's it from the farm this week, hopefully this coming week will be filled with sunshine and good harvesting days!

It's Been a Rough Year

 As does every April, this past April's planting brought yet the promise of a good growing season with a plentiful harvest come August and September. So plentiful that we would struggle with where and how to store all the crops. Grain prices so high they would have to open banks just to store all the money. This is the dream of every farmer when the last seed is planted into the ground. This year was no different.

A timely rain earlier in the spring fueled this promise and things were looking good, it was going to be a good year. Until......

The first incident happened mid-May when they had a windstorm of biblical proportions. Sustained winds in excess of 70 miles an hour creating dust storms, like of which that have not been seen in decades. Disrupting school bus routes, causing accidents and the stripping topsoil of recently planted farm fields. Along with this topsoil went seed and seedlings. There were actual drifts of dirt in ditches along the roadway!

The majority of the damage was to exposed hilltops where they lost hundreds of acres of newly emerged crops. Not the start to the season they were hoping for. 

The next storm hit in early June, a bright sunny day that we all dream about. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and you could almost hear the crops growing in the fields. The yellow of the canola blooms were just starting to pop. 

Then ominous clouds formed over the farm. This storm threatened to bring even stronger winds. And it followed through with that promise with winds which reached 80-100mph. They called it a derecho bringing not only wind, but hail. 

Unlike the storm the month before, this one hit when the crops were at their most vulnerable stage. Right when many of them were flowering and creating the blooms which in turn creates the grain or seed. 

Locally, on the farm itself, trees were ripped out by the roots, doors askew on buildings, grain bins moved from their foundations.

While this was devastating, it was nothing compared to what they saw when they drove around to look at their crops. Beautiful yellow canola fields were totally wiped out. 

Over 2,000 acres totally wiped out. The promise of a bountiful harvest gone overnight. There's the thing about losing your crops. You cannot just call it a day and wait for next spring to plant again. You still have to spray to keep the weeds at bay, you still have to harvest what is left to clear what remains for next years planting. Basically the same expense you would have if the crop were viable, with no income to offset it. There is some insurance, but it does not even come close to what was lost. 

But it is now August and time to harvest the remaining crops. I arrived on Monday after an 8-hour drive. 20 minutes later I was in a semi driving it out to the field. 5 minutes after that I was in a tractor driving within 3 feet of Chris and Farmer Bob's combines as they unloaded peas into the cart I was pulling behind the tractor. And so begins the harvest of 2026. 

We were busy harvesting three pea fields. While two of these fields may not have been hit with either of the storms, they were hit with the heat dome that seemed to cover much of the nation. Pea pods that may normally contain 5-8 peas, contained 3-4 drastically cutting the yield. Again, same expense to harvest, about 1/2 the income to cover this expense. Because it was a lower yield, I was able to put my feet up between dumps. Ah, life is good!

When we were not in the field, I spent my time getting the bins cleaned and ready for in the coming grains cleaning 12 grain bins that day. Boy, was my body sore that night! 

But it was a good sore, and it is good to be back up here with what I consider my second family. Good to see Bob and DeAnne, Chris and Holly, as well as the newlyweds Dylan and Sydney. And I cannot forget Ty a nephew of Bob and DeAnne's who is on his third year working fulltime at the farm. 

Week 1 of three almost in the books, three fields done many more to go. There is no way we will get them all done before I head home, but three weeks is about my limit nowadays. Even though we have been married over 40 years now, it seems the older I get the more I miss Barb when I am away from home. That math just does math in my head but that is the reality of it. 

I talk to her a couple times a day and get updates on puppy life. She is focusing her time on potty training which she is not sure if it is progressing or not. She takes Maisie outside to do her business every hour or, which she does, but Barb is not sure if she yet understands the connection with being outside and going to the bathroom or if she just happens to go while she is out there. Because if she was inside, she would have no qualms about going wherever she is when the need hits. 

She did have one traumatic incident when she got stung on her hand by something while she was outside. Her hand swelled up like up like a balloon. She said she is pretty sure it was a Murder Hornet so at least she still has a sense of humor about it. Three days of pain and itching has been keeping her up at night, of course in addition to Maisie waking up every couple of hours. 

A work in progress, but I have all the confidence that Barb will get there. We too will get there at the farm. We are done with peas and ready to move on to wheat, but the wheat is not ready yet, there is still some green on the stems, and they need them to be totally dry before harvesting. As such, we have a couple of down days, from the field at least. 

One morning I headed out to a field with the riding lawn mower to recut a line between two fields. Because they are a seed dealer, they need to make sure their seed is as clean as possible with no cross contamination. They cut a swath between fields to make sure one variety does not bleed into another. 

I also spent a couple of days picking away at a mess behind one of the buildings eventually getting it cleaned up and somewhat organized. 

This post showed some of the things that were not all sunshine and roses in the farm life. But there is always the promise of tomorrow. The promise of next year, the promise of the next field doing better than expected and the promise of puppies that will bring a smile to your face.