07 Sep Brian: Divide and conquer

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Strasburg, North Dakota — I’m not sure what it takes to be considered a resident of South Dakota, but no one anticipated our stay would stretch past seven weeks. Cool weather, rain days, high humidity, blah blah blah…. Trust me, I’m as tired of writing about harvest delays as you are reading about them. With four young boys needing to return home soon to resume learning, our divide and conquer protocol was put into action.

Splitting up the family is never easy, but we knew all these harvest delays made it inevitable. High school football practice sent Titus home early, leaving us without a tractor operator. For the next week, Ezra and Brenda joined us in the field to run the grain cart, but with another rain event we fell short of finishing. The “back to school crew” packed up and returned to Iowa to get ready for classes, but it came with mixed emotions.

Brenda steps in for Titus as our grain cart operator, and she does a great job despite being a little rusty.
Brenda and the boys make the long drive to join Titus back in Iowa to prepare for back to school.
The “back to school crew” is ready to tackle another year with Titus and Ezra enjoying playing football. Judah and Canaan are their biggest fans, and everyone is all smiles after the first game of the season.

As we closed in on our final acres in South Dakota, more rainy weather motivated us to make every effort to wrap up here. Vernelle reluctantly agreed to play grain cart operator for the day, a first for her. Operating big equipment can be intimidating sometimes, but without her help we never would have finished that day. The machines struggled in the damp straw as a light drizzle set in with only a few acres left. This time we conquered the rain, but as we unloaded one final time into the cart, drizzle turned into a downpour. You’ve never seen so many smiling faces from getting soaking wet, tarping the final loads in the rain.

Vernelle takes a turn in the grain cart, and in the end her help was the only reason we finished before the rain. As head cook, dish washer, laundry guru and now equipment operator, her behind the scenes work isn’t very glamorous, but we couldn’t do what we do without her and Brenda back at the trailer houses keeping the crew functioning and fed.
It’s a race to the finish, and rain-speckled windows reinforced just how close we came to not finishing.
Vernelle documents the final grain cart dump seconds before the drizzle turned to downpour.

Our 50 days in Onida set the record for longest time spent in one place in our 43 years of harvesting. We also set records for highest yields ever seen in both winter and spring wheat. Unable to load equipment in the mud and being short a driver, moving to North Dakota proved to be unorthodox. Long story short, we made two trips over two days. We discovered an electrical issue on Glen’s semi moments before we left that resulted in a tow truck and leaving it behind for repair. I made an unusual road trip late at night with the combine, driving 102 miles up to Strasburg and setting up house trailers after midnight.

Setting up trailer houses after midnight seemed like a fitting way to end a very stressful move to North Dakota.
Record yields made for beautiful fields and a memorable way to say farewell to South Dakota this year.
With limited harvesting time due to uncooperative weather, meals were eaten on the go many days.

Life on the road can be unpredictable, and sometimes you have to divide and conquer to make it all happen. It’s been a little chaotic this week, but North Dakota signals the beginning of the end. This is the last stop on our summer tour, and with half of us already back home the crew is looking forward to one final harvesting push before joining them.

Grain cart driving was a family affair this year. Judah and Canaan got in on the cart driving action, too.
Ezra takes the combine for one final spin through the field before heading back to Iowa for school.
With more than 200 truckloads and 12 million pounds of wheat hauled, South Dakota kept the trucks busy.
Another storm stopped us from harvesting, but the clouds entertained us with some unusual formations.
With the elevators quickly filled to capacity, much of our grain was hauled to bin sites this year.
At last, Cameron unloads our final South Dakota bushels after a 50-day residency in Onida.
With heavy rain on the horizon, Brian and David push the machines to finish our final South Dakota field.

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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