23 Jul Jada: Hoffman Harvesting moving and shaking in Midland

Hoffman Harvesting is busy working in Midland. Typically known as cattle country, farmer’s in western South Dakota are proving us wrong. As far as the eye can see around the Mundt Brother’s farm is wheat or corn. There is a lot of potential in this area and they are reaping from it.

Winter wheat is yielding in the 40’s while test weights are around 60. The fields are larger and hillier than in central South Dakota where we live. In that area, farmers are reporting  diseases in their winter wheat due to all the rain they received this spring and summer. Fortunately, farmers have managed to escape diseases in this area.

Due to rainfall in the evening hours last night, we were unable to start harvesting until the mid-afternoon but still had a productive day. We did have some problems with an auger that needed to be fixed. This had trucks running behind, but things were back to running smoothly before we called it quits for the night. Here are some photos of our day.

Two combines head up the field leaving a strip for the other two combines to cut.

Callum with Roly following heads down the field.

James in combine 3 dumps on Johan in the graincart.

Leon jumps out of his combine so I can give him a ride to the service truck which he will use to help fix a broken down auger.

The service truck heads out of the field towards the bin site, while Oak takes over driving the combine.

How many harvesters does it take to fix an auger? A lot in this case ….. the auger was being stubborn! Thankfully it was fixed without a parts run.

A cool cloud cover over the field got prettier as the sun went down.

A colorful, cloudy view outside of my window.

What I am digging today….. Memories of my dad’s instructions and my less than sharp sense of direction.

As a kid, I remember harvesting in the Midland/ Phillip area, but our farmer at the time moved back to his home state of Texas after his father’s demise. It’s fun to be back in the area and reliving my childhood memories here. I remember when I was old enough to drive, I would take the meal out to the field.

One year, in a week’s time, I was lost with about every guy on the crew. Whether it was my dad’s directions or my less than adequate sense of direction, I will never know. I remember his directions going something like this…. turn right at a field with a bunch of bales and then go until you see an old school house. He might as well of been saying turn where the bird is sitting on the telephone wire because this area is vast country and all those things are a dime a dozen. Thankfully, my vehicle now has a compass and we also have cell phones! I can proudly say I have yet to get lost here this time.