Christy: Changing seasons

This is a beautiful time of year. Leaves around home are starting to turn, and while we have had 80-degree weather here this weekend, last week brought on cold nights and cool mornings. We were close to getting our first frost one night, and while it’s maybe a little early for frost, it’ll be happening soon.

Growing up in Georgia I didn’t witness a lot of extremely cold weather, and I didn’t get to see much snow. Except in 1993, when we had a blizzard so bad everything shut down for about three days. Around here, that’s just a little snowstorm and business goes on as usual. Those days will be upon us soon, so as weather begins to change, we hope to be able to get crops out in a timely manner before conditions are no longer ideal.

As of now though, we can enjoy the cooler weather and hopefully wrap up soybeans in the next couple of weeks. We’ll be ready for the change over to corn.

This week has brought on some challenges, though. While the beans are dry around Minnesota and Iowa, we’ve encountered a few fields where the plant is still very green and hard to cut. Things got so tough we were only able to run at about half the speed we should be running. After machines started plugging, Paul made some modifications to concaves and changed rotor configurations to keep material running smoothly through the machine. These changes solved the problem, and we may still not be running full speed, but this hot weather will hopefully dry the plant down some more so things run better.

Besides that, everything else is moving along. Gary is sending a machine farther west to Roscoe, South Dakota Monday to start their bean harvest, and he will take a couple machines himself down to Nebraska to work on beans there. It feels like we’re really spread out all over with crews still working by Brookings, South Dakota, Hartley, Iowa, and Round Lake, Minnesota.

While delivering meals to the field, Zoey is learning how to drive a pickup. I’ve been working with her on how to steer, and she’s now using the foot pedals, too. The more experience she gains, even though only in the field, will hopefully help her to be a good driver when she is out on her own. I asked her since she’s learning the pickup, if the tractor would be next. Her reply, “Nope. I’m going to drive combine.” We’ll see what she says when she’s older, but I know it would make Paul and myself pretty proud to see her running a machine. That’s a little ways off now, but her interest in driving is a good start.

As harvest begins to pick up, more farmers are in the field, and the roads are showing the extra truck and equipment traffic. We know it’s a pain to get behind slow moving farm machinery, but your patience while we harvest is greatly appreciated. Stay safe.

Christy Paplow can be reached at christy@allaboardharvest.com.

 

All Aboard Fall Harvest is brought to you by Pivot Bio, Western Equipment, John Deere, Unverferth Manufacturing and US Custom Harvesters.

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