Three years ago, we had a huge snow storm come through our area and dropped 30 inches of snow and a month prior we ended up with about 13 inches of rain in a 24-hour time period. Since it never really had a chance to freeze it made the field conditions very muddy. That was the year we combined every month, except January, from when we left for Texas in May until we left for Texas the following May. Thankfully that is not the case this year. There has not been a chance of snow in our forecast yet. We have been pretty fortunate with the warm temperatures during our fall harvest to keep moving along. It’s weird to think that 3 years ago we were impacted by the snow and moisture that drug harvest season out and to not allow most of the crop in North Dakota to get planted because there was too much moisture that spring to having no moisture and crops not producing how they should.
October 2019. (Photo by Kimberly Neumiller.)
Weather has a huge impact on our business. We don’t get holidays off, we don’t quit at five or when the sun goes down, we cut when we can or until we can’t. The forecast may have rain for a few days so expect to go longer than usual while the crop is still allowing you to go.
When it rains that’s the day you catch up on maintenance, laundry and sleep.
There may be a long stretch of rain delays like we had at the beginning of our harvest run this year. We ended up sitting in Texas for two weeks before turning a wheel. It definitely was an adjustment as we had to find things for the guys, and ourselves, to do to keep them from going stir crazy. Once we got going, we played the catch-up game for fair share of the season.
We are still on a rain delay with all eleven of our combines but we are hoping by the beginning of the week we will get to start again.
I encourage everyone to try a harvest run at least once. The experience you get, or the friends you make and being able to travel the Midwest and seeing the beauty it holds is what makes this life one that I love. Throughout the years we have had past employees meet us at our stops and stay for a week just to visit or come to work for a few days because they missed it. It’s times like that that make us feel that we might have had an impact on them and made them step out of their comfort zone.
Kimberly Neumiller can be reached at kimberly@allaboardharvest.com.
All Aboard Fall Harvest is brought to you by Pivot Bio, Western Equipment, John Deere, Unverferth Manufacturing and US Custom Harvesters.
