17 Nov Kimberly: The long, drug out fall harvest

We potentially have fourteen days left for our fall harvest but it seems like it’s going to be in the span of 3 weeks. After the 8 to 14 inches of snow we have received, we are finally starting to see some movement in the fields.

We have called in reinforcements for Westhope, North Dakota, and Lemmon, South Dakota. We loaded up two machines and took one to the Canadian border and the other one to the South Dakota border—just to give you a prospective of where we are located—to try and get the corn off before the weather changes again. Since this snow came early, the ground didn’t get a chance to freeze, so now that the temperatures have warmed up the snow is melting and everything is turning to mud. We combined a few loads from one of our corn fields and put it in our bin with air since the moisture was in the 20s. We did leave some ruts in the ground because of everything being soft and once everyone is able to go the roads are going to be interesting as they are very slimy right now. We get a lot of hunters coming out to our area to hunt ducks and geese and with deer season starting this weekend it will bring a lot of traffic on these roads making the conditions a lot worse.

We got to go on corn in Westhope for three and a half maybe four days before we had to stop for a few days to let the dryer catch up. The corn has been averaging anywhere from 105 to 140 bushels per acre.

Roger got back down to Lemmon, South Dakota, on Nov. 5 and got to start the corn down there. The unfortunate thing for that stop is the elevator shuts down at five and doesn’t open until mid-morning but the farmer does plan on putting some of the corn into a bag so that will help speed things up for us a little bit.

It has been going pretty slow around here with the snow, foggy mornings and the random sleet shower we get once a day but we are hoping next week everything will turn around and we can get things done. We currently have 12 employees left and we are hoping they will stick it out until the end but I know with Thanksgiving coming up they would like to be with their families.

I hope in the next article I can give you a better update, but it seems as if this is just how our year is going to go this year. We have two machines in Finely, North Dakota, still waiting for the ground to either freezer or dry out a little more so we can finish the beans and get them moved home.

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

Thank you to our 2023 All Aboard Fall Harvest sponsors: High Plains Journal, Unverferth Manufacturing Co., Inc., Pivot Bio, T-L Irrigation, ITC Holdings, Corp., Trail King, and U.S. Custom Harvesters, Inc.