17 Aug Janel: South Dakota heat, wind and high yielding spring wheat

South Dakota—It’s no surprise that the spring wheat is yielding well after finishing an excellent winter wheat crop. The spring wheat is yielding over 75 bushels per acre. It’s a heavy crop weighing 63 to 65 pounds per bushel. We are binning the spring wheat and the bins are filling up quickly. The bins have air so that’s been a blessing to keep us busy.
The heat and wind have also been a blessing for getting wheat cut recently. We had a few 100-plus degree temperature days along with 15 to 25 miles per hour wind with 35 mph gusts so that’s helped ripen the spring wheat along. There were slight chances of rain in the forecast. We ended up getting a half inch of rain at the field and over 2 inches of rain in town. The farmers are happy with the rain because the fall crops needed it. Hopefully, we’ll be back in the field later today or tomorrow. Our forecast is now sunny, hot, and dry so we should be able to get the wheat cut here and then get moved up to North Dakota.
Lonny, Jared, and JC are still out in Montana harvesting crops. Both the winter and spring wheat is pretty well finished up. They are now cutting chickpeas and barley.

Janel Schemper can be reached at janel@allaboardharvest.com.

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A quarter of spring wheat we will cut. It looks like very good wheat.

There’s a little green in it yet.

This field has green in it but we’ll sample and see where it’s at.

The heat and wind in the forecast will surely ripen it up.

An elevator in South Dakota. It’s got a fancy painting that I love.

Sampling spring wheat.

This field has too much green yet.

This field is dryer so we’ll get it cut.

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

The heat and wind is a real blessing when we’re trying to get wheat cut.

I love the big fields.

Cutting wheat on a hot and windy day.

The grain is not super dry but luckily we’ve got air bins.

A beautiful evening cutting wheat.

I love the sight of production agriculture.

Another hot and windy day.

Cutting spring wheat in South Dakota.

Blessed to have heat and wind.

It’s 101 degrees outside and windy.

Looks like a storm building to the south.

Clouds and sky getting darker to the south.

Unloading on the go.

Cutting wheat.

I love this time of day when I can see my combine shadow.

Cutting wheat.

The wind switched again. Now it’s out of the east. Uh oh.

A beautiful field of wheat to cut.

Sunsets are especially beautiful way out in the country.

Pretty views in the field.

It’s windy out of the north now.

Unloading wheat on the cart.

Cutting wheat.

Working late.