Christy: End of the season celebration

Our new cold storage shed built right before the snow fell.

Our new cold storage shed built right before the snow fell.

Worthington, Minnesota—We finished combining on Monday, and by Wednesday all crew and equipment made it home. The final trip home didn’t go quite as planned as it was a little icy when leaving Roscoe and unfortunately one of our pickups slid on a bridge and did some damage to one of our crew campers and the pickup. It’s definitely not the note you want to end on, but thankfully no one was hurt. We can add a few more repairs to the long winter list of work to be done.
Besides that, we’re all really happy to finally be done. Equipment has quickly been cleaned up and stored. Not a moment too soon, as when I awoke this morning the ground was white with the first snowfall of winter this season. I know most aren’t too particularly excited to see it, but this southern girl loves it.

The prime rib fresh off the smoker.

The prime rib ready for the smoker.

Jeremy Kleve, Paul's sister's husband, serving up a slice of prime rib for his daughter, Breanna.

Jeremy Kleve, Paul’s brother-in-law, serving up a slice of prime rib for his daughter, Breanna.

After everything made it back on Wednesday, Paul’s brother-in-law came over to make his famous prime rib for the crew for our end of season celebration. It was great to see all our crew back together and sharing in all the joys and triumphs, as well as adversities and problems we faced throughout the year. The crew may not be the exact crew we started out with, but the ones that made it the whole season are proud of what they accomplished. We are, too. I’m really hopeful we’ll see a lot those faces again next year.

Crew enjoying the fantastic end of season supper.

Crew enjoying the fantastic end of season supper.

Some more of the crew at our supper. Rhonada has old school lunch tables in her garage to accommodate everyone.

Some more of the crew at our supper. Rhonada has old school lunch tables in her garage to accommodate everyone.

Right now, we’ve had a few guys head home, and some won’t be taking off for a little while yet. I know we will keep a few crew around for the winter, and I think after the next week we should be whittled down to having only our winter crew in place.

Paul took off this morning for Washington, DC. He is on the board for U. S. Custom Harvesters, Inc. and will be working in Washington on advocating for legislation to help harvesters. We’ll miss him this week, but I’ll be busy finishing up and organizing all the things I put on the back burner while we were cutting.

Another addition we had in the works this spring was finally almost completed before the snow this morning. We added a new storage shed at our home to be able to store all equipment out of the winter weather. All that’s left to complete are the doors which should be installed next week. Paul was happy to finally see it up as all the materials sat in our yard all summer. With the wet conditions, dirt work wasn’t completed on time to fit into our slot on the building schedule.

There’s definitely a lot still to work on in the coming weeks, but it’s nice to have everyone home before the weather turns colder.

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

All Aboard Fall Harvest is brought to you by Unverferth Mfg. Co. Inc., ITC Great Plains, Pivot Bio, U.S. Custom Harvesters, T-L Irrigation, Titan Machinery, and High Plains Journal.

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