Harvest Time!

Have you ever found yourself driving down a country road and come across a very slow moving pickup truck going well under the posted speed limit? If you have, it was probably a farmer. To you it may seem like they are never in a hurry to get anywhere, going 45 in a 55. To them they are flying! 

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

You need a big saw to cut big timbers!

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!

Wildlife on the J-B

Although we are continuing to work on our and Kevin's barndominiums, I wanted to take a moment to share some of the wildlife pictures we have taken on our property. 

Deer are our most common visitors. We have both whitetail and mule deer in the area. The mule deer are very accommodating when it comes to getting their pictures taken while the whitetails are a bit more camera shy. They tend to stop by first thing in the morning and right before sunset when the days are at their coolest.

This bachelor group of bucks comes in about 5:30 every morning

If there is no corn out for them right away, they have no problem staring in the windows letting us know they are there and hungry!

Typically the does show up alone but one day one doe showed up with twin fawns. Now they, along with another single fawn are almost daily visitors. 

Dakota just ignores the deer, while Daisy takes offense to their intrusion and will stand at the screen and "bark" at them. The deer just stare at her and wonder what her problem is. 

While most of the bucks hang around by themselves, we have one that comes in with the does and likes to play "king of the hill" like a king watching over his kingdom.

We also have a tub of water out there for them but this doe loves to drink out of the birdbath. 

Speaking of birds, almost 40 turkeys will show up once in a while to clean up any corn remnants that the deer leave behind. 

Not to be forgotten, we have a couple of bunnies that come around as well....

On the house front, I have been spending most of my days over at Kevin and Cheryl's. We are making some great progress. 

Over the past couple of weeks we have installed fascia, shingles, a working toilet (woohoo!), the boiler system for the domestic water and in-floor heat,  the carport and varnishing the boards for the inside have been the major projects.

West side almost all shingled!

Boiler system installed!

Cheryl varnishing while peanut supervises

The two biggest projects were forming and concreting the patio area and building the carport. It started out something like this.

Pre-shingles, carport and concrete.

Before building the carport we had to form up the patio and get concrete poured as we could no longer reach that area once the carport is up. 

Form all set!

Barb came over and helped with the actual pour. We poured 5 yards of concrete in a little over an hour and then spent another hour finishing the edges putting the final touches on it. 

All done!

On the carport, the first thing we had to do was to cutback the roofline where the carport was going. Unfortunately, several hours into the project it started pouring rain. An inch an hour for the next three hours.....What a mess! We had buckets in the kitchen and entryway but we could not contain everything and that area of the house got soaked!

Once the rain stopped we got the house sealed up again and over the next few days we worked on building the trusses out of 8"x8" timbers, installing the cross beams and getting the trusses up. 

Just need to get the roofing on and shingled and we can cross that project off the list!

While I am over at Kevin's, Barb is still busy working on our house. She has gotten a couple of walls done. Hopefully by this time next week we will have all the major walls complete!

That girl knows how to handle a finish nailer!

We have also decided to extend the loft by 1' so it covers the top of the kitchen cabinets (why didn't we think of this earlier!?!?) This meant I had to cut through the kitchen/bathroom wall to install rim boards that would support this flooring. We are also going to run our cooktop vent pipe though this and vent it outside. This project will take a little more dedicated time but in the end I think it is the right move. 

Flooring extension with vent pipe installed

Our neighbors Jim and Brenda are selling their land and their rig and are moving onto bigger and better things. Come to think of it our neighbors on both sides are selling their property.....humm... If you know anyone looking for 40 acres of heaven here in South Dakota or a Grand Design Momentum with a complete solar package, we know just the right people!

That pretty much sums up the last couple of weeks here in South Dakota. Things are moving along great in some areas, a little slower in others but it progress and any progress is a plus!

My Wife is the Most Wonderfulest Woman in the World

Apparently, calling your wife a cow on social media is not a good life choice. Who knew? Time to do a little damage control…..I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such a wonderful, thoughtful and FORGIVING wife. I am not worthy. 

I am hoping that is enough so she will go off strike and I can again have a meal consisting of more than saltine crackers and water. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, crackers…. Except Wednesday nights when we get to go to the Pringle Bar for burger night. Now she says “This cow isn’t going to give her milk away for free.” I am not sure what that means because she knows I don’t even drink milk. But I do like it in my malts, that must be what she means and apparently she is going to start charging me for them?

We had big go’ins ons here in The Hills. First off it was Gold Discovery Days in Custer! This is a huge event that included a craft fair with 10 tents and carnival rides. Compared to big cities some might consider this event lame but it is exactly why were moved here. I mean how do you beat a 1970’s era rides and games! Walking through the “midway” and rides brought Barb and I back to our teenage years. 

We also tried out a new market in town, the Wild Spruce Market, which happens to have a number of beers on tap so we just had to get a flight!

The next big event is that Kevin and Cheryl moved out! Kevin sold out his majority partnership in his construction company, Cheryl put her house on the market and now they are fulltime South Dakota residents! Their arrival is the culmination of years of dreaming and preparation. We could not be happier for them and are excited to have them here. Over the next few months we will be working hard on their house to get it ready for the winter. 

Barb and I, along with Kevin and Cheryl, Dan and Bonnie at the Pringle Bar for burger night!

Monday marked the arrival of my good friend Doug from Wisconsin. Doug and I met in….probably 1987 or ’88 and have been great friends ever since. We have one of those friendships that endure time and distance.

He retired from his professional career a little over a year ago and now has time to do what he enjoys. He is also one of the most talented taxidermists you will find. All of the head mounts, fish and skins you see in our pictures were mounted and prepared by Doug. The additional bonus of him coming out is that he delivered 3 more deer mounts to us! These mounts were particularly special to me as these were my South Dakota archery deer from the last three years! 

He was only able to stay out for two days so we spent our time 4 wheeling and Jeeping around the area. Oh, and working on fence. We were able to get some T posts along about 1/4 mile of the west edge of our property. Sadly, I did not get one picture during his visit. 

Our big project this week was tackling the tongue and grove on the south wall. This was probably be our most challenging wall for a couple of reasons; one is the fact that we are laying out these boards diagonally rather than vertically or horizontally as with all the other walls. The other reason is that we have to work around the two large trap windows.

One would think that starting out would be the easiest part right? I mean all you have to do it figure out the proper angle to have each end of the boards perfectly horizontal then lay it against the ceiling and nail it down right? The most important part of doing T&G is getting the first few boards right, that makes the rest of it so much easier. Sounds easy in principle. In reality not so much. Getting the proper angle was not too bad. We did a few practice pieces. The first on was at 17°, too much angle, the next was 10°, close but still too much angle. 9° ended up being the perfect angle.

So now we just need to cut the first board to length and throw it up. And it worked fine up to a point. The diagonal board fit perfectly up against the ceiling the whole length except 3 of the ceiling boards were about ¼” higher than the others leaving a ugly gap between ceiling and our first diagonal board. I spent over an hour trying to draw those 3 boards down to fit tight against the diagonal board without any luck when I had an epiphany. “What if I went up into the attic and pounds those three boards down to meet the other board. Genius! The only problem was that it was like 90 outside which means it was like 150° up in the attic plus there is only 4’ at the peak up there so I literally had to crawl over the insulation from truss to truss to the far end of the house. With Barb below, she helped me locate the proper boards and I gently tapped them down into place but it worked like a charm! Day 1 ended with 2 boards up on one side.

The next day we did the starter boards on the other side. Luckily those fit perfectly and did not require me going back up into the ceiling. Once those were up we could rock and roll on the rest of the boards on either side of the traps. Once we got to the bottom of it was the moment of truth. We needed the next board full length board to fit perfectly with the T&G boards on either side of the traps. It did take some minor adjustments but eventually, it fit like a glove!

The other challenge was getting the boards from both sides to line up perfectly in the middle as just the slightest variation will make a big difference over 10’. We left a 5½” gap between the two sections where we will put a decorative board. This not only adds to the overall look it also hides any imperfection if you don’t happen to have both sides meet up perfectly in the middle. As it turned out, ours did match perfectly!

Progress after Day 3

So we took our time leveling every layer to make sure we were as accurate as possible. 5 days later we were done and are thrilled with the way it turned out! I realize this is a lot of info on just one wall but it was quite an accomplishment for us.

One thing you will notice about that picture is that there is no scaffolding! It has been a fixture in our living room for over a year. We are finally done with the high work (for now) and we took it down. We will put it back up when it is time to do the trim and the stone on the fireplace. 

The weather has been hot! Well, hot for us. Highs have been in the upper 80's. We have taken the dogs for a swim in our waterhole a couple of times. We throw the duck dummy out there for Dakota and she would go it, drop it at our feet and want us to throw it again and again and again. I think she could do it all day!  

"Wait for me, wait for me!"

Daisy would swim out and try to get the duck as well but Dakota is just too much faster. One time when I made Dakota stay, she actually went out and retrieved the duck as well!

"I got it, I got it!"

Last but not least we got our J bar B Ranch sign on the garage......

We love it!

This coming week looks like more hot weather, we have a mix of project planned here as well as over at Kevin's. Hopefully we won't melt!