01 Nov Christy: Moving home

Ocheyedan, Iowa — We have combined the last fields for our customers around home, and Patrick’s crew has completed jobs by Roscoe, South Dakota. Gary’s still chopping away at corn by Elkton, South Dakota, but he should have those done this week.

The crew by Roscoe is currently beginning to bring equipment back this way, and should have everything back by the first of the week, hopefully. I’ll bet they’ll be happy to have some home-cooked meals. Unfortunately, we don’t have a cook out there while they harvest, so they rely on grabbing meals from local diners and what they have time to make for themselves before they head to the field.

It’s still really unbelievable that fall harvest is almost done this early. We usually see an early year finishing around the first or second week of November, but being done before the end of October is new. I’m not complaining, but these last six weeks have been insanely busy, and a lot of hours have been put in getting everything completed in one shot. We have excellent weather conditions for fall harvest to thank for the early end.

We haven‘t had any days off this fall, and today Paul gave our crew the day off. They’ve enjoyed heading out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to be free to do what they want. Paul cleaned up some replant beans, and he’s preparing to head up to Ivanhoe tomorrow to get the rest of his corn out.

This morning Cory and Derek came over with the auger to set it up at our bin site. I think they’re so brave to climb up on the bins to open the lids. My fear of heights has grown steadily as I’ve gotten older, and I have a hard time getting up there myself. Paul’s last 300 acres of corn will get done in the next couple of days, hopefully.

Corn for us, personally, hasn’t done as well as we would have liked. We had a field of corn that saw some heavy hail damage and only produced about 140 bushels per acre. I’m hoping acres up farther north in Minnesota will yield better.

Later this week, I’m hoping everyone will be back around home because our local Case IH dealer is giving us a customer appreciation supper at our shop. They did this for us last year, and if I remember correctly, I don’t think we were finished combining yet. This year I believe we will be. It’ll be a great end of year celebration.

After we finish these last few acres of the season, I hope everyone has a safe and great end to their seasons harvesting. Early or not, I still feel that we’ve really put the hours in this year. The season as a whole has been a good one.