12 Jul Janel: Harvest ups and downs

Goodland, Kansas – We’ve been harvesting wheat every single day here on the Kansas/Colorado state line, which is great. However, we’ve been getting little rain showers almost every evening around 9 p.m. causing us to have to quit early most nights. These little rain showers usually just make a mess of the equipment. The dust and the chaff on the combines and blue headers get stuck on badly with the rain drops, and every morning we’re kept busy blowing off the combines. And I get my biggest workout of the day in washing windows like crazy. Washing windows every single day gets old, but it is part of harvesting and the weather. 

When we see the storms showing up in the west, we almost always have a threat of hail. Disappointingly, we did have some hail out of one or two of the clouds. Harvesting wheat that’s been hailed on and a few acres of wheat with mosaic disease takes all of the fun out of it. Both are definitely disastrous to the wheat crop. That’s just the way it is sometimes. We have had plenty of good wheat to cut though for the most part. The wheat yielded 60-80 bushels per acre. The test weights were 60-63 pounds, and the protein ran at mostly 10 but was 12-plus sometimes.  

Of course my bad luck has also included tire troubles. I have been miserable the past few days. I had a deer antler in a combine tire and had it patched, so I could keep on combining but have to have a new tire. Any idea what a new tire costs for a combine? Trust me. You don’t want to know. I’m sick about it. Whoever gets to harvest in the same field as me is the luckiest combine operator ever. If someone is going to have trouble in the field, it’ll be me. I always get the deer antler in my tire. And it always seems to happen in the field that is super far from anywhere. I just want to cut wheat. On a good note, my blue header has been running like a dream! I love it. But when I have tire troubles and can’t keep harvesting, it puts me in a disgusted mood.

Other than that, we’re moving up to western Nebraska to cut wheat. We’ll be there a few days, and it sounds like rain and more rain in the forecast.  We’re soon to find out.   

I love having big fields of wheat to harvest!

This is bin work.

Sage Schemper will be boss in no time. He is four years old and already knows what’s going on in the field.

Right before the rain.

Jared Schemper sent me this photo from western Nebraska. That’s where we’re headed to next.

Miss Moo and I working the day away again.

Mirror shot.

Moo dreaming in the combine again!

An evening photo of the pretty moon.

Making a new land across this big wheat field.

Storm clouds and a Peterbilt.

Storm clouds and a Peterbilt.

JC’s Peterbilt.

It rained all around us while we were harvesting.

My combine operator friend, Jordan from France, sent me this photo of Moo and I harvesting wheat and unloading on the go. Thanks for the photo, Jordan. I love it!

The rain drops just won’t stay away for a whole day.

More rain drops.

Our tractor grain cart unloading wheat onto the truck.

One single pass through the field, and it was raining all around us.

An old sod house in the distance.

An old sod house. It looks like a light is on, but it’s just the sunlight in the window. I bet it was a happy home at one time.

The old sod house up close. The wheat was laying flat on the ground all the way around it.

Another moon photo, and it was raining all around us.

Sterling Schemper loves combine time too.

Sunder and Sage are my favorite boys, and they love imaginery fields.