28 Aug Janel: Feels like fall

North Dakota–The entire month of August has felt like fall up here in the Dakotas. For harvesters, this takes a lot of patience as it causes us opportunity lost for income and puts us behind schedule. We need heat, wind and sunshine to cut lots of wheat and we’ve hardly had any, plus we’ve sat through several rain storms. We finished up in South Dakota and did cut nice wheat there that yielded 55 to 65 bushels per acre. The test weights were less than 60 pounds per bushel but the protein was 14 to 16 percent.

We are currently at our last stop on wheat harvest and have lots of spring wheat and canola to cut. Hopefully, we will have decent harvest weather while we are here and put in some long days of harvesting. This is one of my favorite places to harvest and I look forward to every single day that we get to cut here. The scenery is beautiful and the fields are nice. The crops look good but we just got here and it rained so I haven’t been to the field yet. The good news is that we do have air bins for grain storage so hopefully we will be very busy while we are here.

Our 10-day forecast is cool with highs only in the 60s and 70s. However, I hope we get some heat soon and the rain clouds stay far away from here so we can harvest as much spring wheat and canola as possible! When we finish here in September we will travel back south for fall harvest.

All Aboard Wheat Harvest is sponsored by High Plains Journal and John Deere. Janel Schemper can be reached at janel@allaboardharvest.com.

Schemper Harvesting cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

That’s me wishing we were cutting.  I would cut all day every single day if I could!

Harvesting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Schemper Harvesting cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.  I love sunshine and having wheat to cut!

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Unloading spring wheat on the truck.

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Harvesting spring wheat in South Dakota.  I love clear skies and sunshine!

Harvesting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Traveling to the next field.

Harvesting spring wheat in South Dakota.

My combine shadow.  I love this time of day!

My dad cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Beautiful scenery.  I love being in the field!

Waiting to hear back the sample moisture. It was dry so we cut the field!

Miss Moo wants a combine ride. We sat in the field all day waiting on wheat to dry. We finally got to start cutting at 6:30 p.m. on this day.

Harvesting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Unloading on the go.