05 Jul Janel: Early mornings and late nights
Goodland, Kansas – It’s been early mornings and late nights (also known as 24/7 eat, sleep, truck and combine) for many consecutive days now. You won’t hear me complain though. I hope it continues. Working makes me happy and is when I feel my very best! I feel blessed to have the ability to work and make an honest living in this great country. Having the opportunity to get to work all day every day is amazing.
I’m happy to share what I’ve been seeing out in the Kansas wheat fields. We were in the Dodge City area and had wheat cutting weather for the most part, including heat and humidity under 50 percent during the day. We did get sprinkled out with just a few rain drops three evenings in a row. However, an early evening in from the field is always an excellent opportunity to catch up on rest, even if it is already 8 or 9 p.m. The wheat was pretty good again this year and yielded in the 50 to 70 bushels per acre range, and almost all of the test weights were 61 to 63 pounds. I did harvest a field that didn’t yield so well due to mosaic disease. It is a major problem and causes significant yield loss. I would say the wheat could have made 50 to 60 bushels per acre but only yielded 35 due to mosaic. It also ruined about 20 acres of the field that we left uncut due to it showing zero for a yield. On a high note, the wheat was still standing, which is always something to be very thankful for as a combine operator. Last year I had to suffer through having to harvest a few pivots of wheat that were laying flat on the ground (which is a headache and miserable and terrible), so this standing wheat crop was a dream to harvest.
We moved over to the Kansas/Colorado state line near Goodland, Kansas late last week, and we are now on Mountain Time. The day we moved here the travel weather was excellent. It was a cool 70 degrees. However, when we arrived here, we went straight to the field. We’ve been busy harvesting high-yielding wheat (80-plus bushels per acre), and our forecast looks hot, windy, sunny and dry for 10 days. We are keeping the truck drivers busy, and they’ve been reporting long lines at the elevators. The elevator opened early Sunday morning, and I hauled a load to town and witnessed the long lines. Harvest is in full swing here in Western Kansas!
All Aboard Wheat Harvest™ is sponsored by High Plains Journal and John Deere. Janel can be reached at janel@allaboardharvest.com.
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