07 Aug Northern Montana
Cut Bank, Montana—The crew with Mark is now approximately 35 miles northwest of Cut Bank. That’s just shy of Canada, folks! Mark reports that there is unpredictable cell phone service and no stations come in on either the A.M. or F.M. radio! However, the XM Radio advertisement station does come in.
Mark says the field they are on is averaging just shy of 80 bushels per acre. They’ve battled a few breakdowns recently but were able to get everything back in gear. I guess when machines have run from Texas to the Canadian border, something is bound to happen. We’re thankful that while these have been annoying (especially where we’re so close to the end), we have been able to avoid something extremely major.
Ryan reported tonight that he talked to the farmer near Garrison, North Dakota, and it sounds like they may need to be ready to try it as early as this weekend.
Albert and Wian doing some truck repairs.
Combine maintenance (and supervision?)!
Food time!
Thanks to Jill Tustin for submitting the photos above from her time in Montana!
All Aboard Wheat Harvest™ is sponsored by High Plains Journal and New Holland Agriculture. You can contact Laura at laura@allaboardharvest.com.
Dan McGrew
Posted at 07:26h, 08 August1951 — Last three weeks of August, first ten days of September, rain, rain, rain across Montana. Along old Highway Two and the Great Northern roadside ditches, some of the locals used outboard motor boats to move between towns west of Havre. Several of us lived in a hay-bale house at an auction barn, fence planks across the top supporting a tarp roof, with another row of bales all around holding the tarp in place. Lived there for more than two weeks. I was lucky enough to get a job feeding a cement mixer on a service station construction job in Shelby, after moving back there from Cut Bank.
Found a harvest crew headed home to Pampa, Texas and hitched a ride, helping drive. There were enough extra hitchhiking driver for that run to be made in three 24 hour days. Despite the rain.