17 Oct Kimberly: Where did September go?

Where has September gone? Sitting for a month prior to our North Dakota harvest, it seemed like this month went by extremely fast, which is a good thing to be busy again.
We finally have ten of the eleven combines cutting soybeans here in North Dakota. We pulled two combines out of Donnybrook along with Logan, Danica and a few employees and took them to Westhope to join up with the other three that got started on beans a week prior to the rest. While Mychal and his crew started cutting beans in Donnybrook, Cole’s crew was still cutting wheat because they ended up having a few more rain delays than the rest of us.

(Photo by Joey Entzian.)

As I am writing this, I am watching two of our combines out my living room window cutting on our beans. Cole brought two combines home this week and started on the neighbor’s beans and then jumped over to ours. They still have one combine in the Langdon area trying to finish the wheat but haven’t had much luck with the dew and fog they have had.
The beans around home have been averaging 30 to 45 bushels per acre with an 11% moisture, Westhope has been 35 to 50 bushels per acre with a moisture of 12% and the beans in Donnybrook are averaging 33 bushels per acre.

While the end of fall harvest is nowhere close, some of the combines will be finishing where they are and start moving around North Dakota to keep everything moving along. Mychal is thinking he will be done with beans in Donnybrook by early next week and will bring them to the next spot and then head back up there when the corn is ready.

Mychal dumping the grain cart in Donnybrook.

The temperatures here in North Dakota have been all over, today it was 75 degrees but we are now in a freeze watch the next few nights. The next few days we will see upper 40s and low 50s during the day and 30s at night. Guess it’s time to turn the heater on! The weather here during fall harvest can be unpredictable, we could have very nice weather with a few rain delays, many rain delays, cooler weather, frost or even snow. I cannot speak for the other harvesters that are cutting down south as I don’t know how the weather gets for them, but I know the fall weather can sometimes be hard on our campers. I remember my first couple of years on harvest we had to place hay bales around the camper to keep the water lines from freezing, wrapping the hoses with insulators and letting the water drip overnight to keep it flowing. A few years ago, I invested in some heated water hoses and some heat tape to wrap around the sewer hose to help with that issue.

Cutting Durum in Donnybrook when the trucks had a long haul.

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

All Aboard Fall Harvest is sponsored by ITC Great Plains, T-L Irrigation, Pivot Bio, Unverferth Manufacturing Co, Inc., US Custom Harvesters, Titan Machinery, and High Plains Journal.