Back at the Farm!

 Ah, it is good to be back at the farm. Kind of like ground hogs day in a sense. Being my 11th or 12th fall up here, things become routine. I do have to refamiliarize myself with some of the machinery. Like, what RPM do you put the tractor at when unloading grain from a truck into a bin. Or which switch turns on the PTO. Within an hour of my arrival, I was doing just that, unloading a truck. 

There are 6 of us on the farm working on getting the crops in; Farmer Bob is in one combine, Chris is in another, Chris' dad, Bob S. is in the grain cart, Dylan and I are trucking, and Ty is cutting hay, cleaning grain and doing a variety of other jobs back at the farm. So far, this has not varied too much; Dylan has jumped in the combine a time or two, but the rest of us have pretty much stuck to those roles. 

There has been more than our fair share of breakdowns, at least it seems that way to me. A fuel pump here, a pulley and shaft there. And there is always the occasional bearing, sensor and shear pin that goes out. Luckily, they are pretty self-sufficient when it comes to repairs. I am not exaggerating when I say they have saved well over $10,000 in labor costs just this week alone. 

The focus of the week was on the wheat fields. 155 acres one day, a couple hundred the next. How much you get done in a day depends on how fast you can go in the field. If the straw is tough, you need to go slower, pretty much everything is under 4mph even in the best conditions. The other things that dictate how much you get done is the moisture level and the aforementioned breakdowns.  You cannot just get up in the morning and hit the fields, you need the night's dew to dissipate before you can get out there, many times it is after noon before we get out into the field. 

While waiting for that to happen, there are always the morning chores, fueling the combines, topping off the DEF, dumping trucks from the night before, greasing up equipment, cleaning out bins, moving augers..... So far, our days have been like 7am-7pm, but we were up one night until midnight working on replacing that pulley and shaft. The Case dealers even have "after hours" parts people on call. Does not matter what time it is, call the parts number and someone answers. That person will then drive into the shop, find the part and put it out for you. On the night in question Farmer Bob was running to get parts at 11pm.  Time is money and one cannot afford to be broke down. 

Diesel on the left, DEF on the right

As I said, my job this week was trucking. Depending on the truck, I will be loading with anywhere from 60,000 to 70,000lbs of wheat which I then bring back to the farm and unload into one of 30 or so grain bins of the farm. The bin vary in size from 4,000 bushel (roughly 4 trucks) to 50,000 bushel (roughly 50 trucks. 

The seed will sit in these until they are either sold on the commodity market or cleaned and sold for seed to other farmers. Most of the fields know their fate even before planting. Some are raised specifically for seed and some they know will be commodity when they put it into the ground. Sometimes farmers will have the seed under contract even before they put it in the ground in the spring, say, with General Mills or a beer manufacturer. It is quite the process.  

Depending on the crop, we have to "sanitize" the combines, trucks, cart and augers between varieties. This means getting into every crook and cranny, blowing the seeds out. Since much of their harvested seed is sold to other farmers to plant the following spring, you do not want cross contamination between varieties. 

See all that seed on the ground above and below? There are a lot of places for seeds to hide in those machines!

While the trucks and cart are relatively quick, the combines take about two hours each. But you have to be somewhat of a contortionist to climb in and out of the trucks and carts. The best way into the truck hopper is through the trap under the truck which is about 18" from the ground. My old-man bod just does not bend like it used to. I've tried going in from the top, but it is so steep and slippery, you pretty much just shoot to the bottom anyways. 

Did I mention the bins? Yeah, we have to clean those too.....

Then there is the moving grain from one bin to another. This happened a couple of times this week when a big bin only had a few thousand bushel left in it and we needed to free it up for the grain coming in from the field. We moved what was remaining into a smaller bin. 

Out of the bigger bin (left) and into the smaller bin (right)

 There are 6 varieties of wheat: Hard Red Winter, Hard Red Spring, Soft Red Winter, Soft White, Hard White and Duram. This week we harvested Hard Red Spring and Duram. Duram wheat is used primarily for pasta, it also has a very high gluten content, red wheat is used for pretty much everything else. 

Duram on the left, Red on the right

They recently bought a drone to video some of their fields for their seed business. Here are a couple, one of a pea field and one of a wheat field. If you look in the background at about the 1:00 mark of the second video, you can see their farm in the background. 

The best part of the day comes around 6pm when supper arrives. Either Holly (Chris's wife) or Stephanie (Ty's wife) arrives in the field with a Styrofoam container of food. This week suppers included ribs, pizza, sloppy Joe's and cheese steaks! The end of the day a shower comes in a close second. With the temps up in the 90's this week and as dirty as we get that shower feels mighty nice! 

I put up a couple of critter cameras before I left South Dakota, two of which are cellular and send pictures to my phone. Here are a few of the more interesting shots. 

You may have to look twice before you figure out what this one is.....

The animal in the next one isn't quite as obvious as the cow above, but if you look to the right edge you will see it. One of the hills most elusive critters. 

Some sad news though, Remmie passed away this past week. Some of you might recall this post I wrote about him this spring. He had the kind of life a dog should have; a loving family, the freedom to walk freely around the farm and being able to pursue his passion for hunting. Chris and Holly gave him the best life, he could not have asked for better owners. To say he is missed would be one a huge understatement. I urge you to read/reread that post to give you an idea what he meant to their family.