08 Nov A very long rain delay

It has been a while since my last post and after a very long rain delay, we have been pretty busy around here.  After spending seventy-seven days in Westhope they finally made the journey home. Once they got home, they had a couple days to recoup before it got hectic.

It rained on and off for over two weeks around home so that put a little damper on our combining. Once it finally cleared up, we have been going pretty steady for a while. The ladies and I brought campers into the shop and started cleaning them up and winterizing them so they are out of our way. The remaining guys that are here have moved into the bunkhouse in our shop.

The beans haven’t been running very well in our area as they are running anywhere from 20 to 40 bushels an acre. We got all of our jobs done around North Dakota and got everything back to our shop and started on some of our local farmers and finished them up. We started to blow off and clean up the combines as we thought we were done for the year minus our corn, but the phone rang and we headed a few miles away from the shop to do some more beans for another local farmer. Since some employees had left my son, Bentley, my sister-in-law and myself all ran equipment as we ended up putting six of our machines on the 600 acres we had to do for him. That definitely made the day go a lot faster. Once we were done, we let the farmer know and he decided to give us some more acres so we took four combines to start the rest of them. We took another one and changed it over to start our corn. As of now we are officially done combining soy beans and will start to clean them up again. We will have two, possibly three, running on our corn and hoping the snow holds off so we can knock that out quickly. There is a chance of snow or rain all week so North Dakota winter will be here soon.

Some employees have already left for the year and we have been shorthanded on help most of the season so we are starting to see the end of the harvest season. The combines that were down by Jamestown, North Dakota, finished shortly after we got going and moved home and one finally made its way back last week.

Roger’s crew moved out of Logan, Kansas, and back to Grant, Nebraska, to finish the corn they had left and should be home by the end of the week. They have been down there for a month already. The dry land corn averaged 49 bushels and the irrigated is averaging 160 bushels. Our 2021 harvest season is coming to an end but we still have a few things to do before it is over.

Kimberly Neumiller can be reached at kimberly@allaboardharvest.com.

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