16 Aug Brian: Poker face

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Onida, South Dakota — After being out of the field for more than two weeks, the crew has finally started harvesting in South Dakota. The odds of sitting still this long were pretty low, but when it comes to Mother Nature, all bets are off. The weather has proven to be a real wild card, so much so that the crew feels like we’re taking part in a high-stakes poker tournament.

Foggy mornings, frequent rains and ultra-high humidity have made it seem like the deck has been stacked against us. The wet weather, paired with thick, dense straw, has trapped a large amount of humidity below the wheat canopy. Cool temperatures and light winds haven’t helped dry things out very quickly. The weather also has reminded us of one of those back-room poker games. I’m talking about the kind you see in the movies, dimly lit with stale cigar smoke hanging in the air. Virtually every day, wildfire smoke has transformed the sun into a bursting ball of red. A heavy haze has begrimed the sky, dulling a landscape usually bursting with vibrant colors.

Like a back room poker parlor, wildfire smoke hangs thick in the air and turns the sun red.
The sun slips behind another bank of storm clouds as Glen starts his 66-mile round trip to the elevator.
The sky almost looks to be on fire, but in reality the radish hue is created by the wildfire smoke.

We feel like we’ve been dealt a bad hand, dealing with a pair of problems. Fighting high kernel moisture has been the least of our worries. Most of the winter wheat is swirled and down, collapsing under the weight of grain and one too many windstorms. The combines must cut very low to the ground to recover as many heads as possible, and there is still plenty of green straw at ground level. It’s taking a huge amount of horsepower to process all that tough straw, and we’ve been creeping along many days at 2 mph.

Another storm approaches. It’s the last thing this down, tangled wheat needs during harvest time.
The heavy straw consumes massive amounts of horsepower, and this warning screen appears too often.
Cutting low to the ground increases the chance of finding a rock, which can cause catastrophic damage.

What we hadn’t bet on was the monster yield numbers we’ve been seeing. We knew it looked like a good crop when we arrived, but no one expected this good. We hear many fields are making more than 75 bushels per acres, but we’ve harvested a few even better. All that dense straw slowing us down is also keeping our grain tanks full and the grain cart busy as we harvest mile-long rows. The yield monitor is consistently showing values I’ve never seen before, and once all the scale tickets are added up we are almost guaranteed fields average over 100 bushels per acre. I’m not much of a gambler, but if I were to place a bet on setting our personal record for highest field yield in more than 40 years of harvesting, regardless of location, I’d take my pile of chips and go all in on this year’s crop.

David unloads on the go, a frequently choreographed dance with the triple-digit yields we’re seeing here.
We’ve called in reinforcements to haul away from the machines with yields this high. Titus loads one of the farmer’s semis for another trip to the elevator, and we are grateful for the hauling help.
While the entire field average is obviously not this high, even seeing yield numbers over 150 bushels per acre briefly flash on the screen is unheard of in South Dakota. It’s pretty amazing!

With such high yields and slow progress, farmers and harvesters alike are feeling a little anxious about just how much work is left to go here, but our odds of winning against the weather have improved. That latest storm’s gusty winds seem to have finally cleared out our smoggy skies, the humidity is finally returning to more manageable levels, and excessive heat warnings in the forecast all mean our luck may be about to change. Maybe the deck has finally been reshuffled in our favor, and if we play our cards just right we might not be able to hold back a smile while trying to keep our poker faces.

The crew scrambles to beat another storm as lightning streaks across the sky, delaying harvest again.
Titus doesn’t sit still in the grain cart much, especially on these mile-long fields here in South Dakota.
Watching boats speed by on the Missouri River is not a sight we usually see in a wheat field, but it’s fun!
Beautiful wheat fields have resulted in the highest yields we’ve ever seen in over 40 years of harvesting.

Brian Jones can be reached at brian@allaboardharvest.com.

Thank you to our 2024 All Aboard Wheat Harvest sponsors: High Plains Journal, Lumivia by Corteva Agriscience, Unverferth Manufacturing Co., Inc., Merit Auctions, Kramer Seed Farms, Shelbourne Reynolds and U.S. Custom Harvesters, Inc.

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aawh, agriculture, All Aboard, harvest, High Plains Journal, HPJ, oklahoma, wheat

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