06 Nov Christy: Snow on Halloween

Worthington, Minnesota — It seems like every time we say the words ‘We’ll be done on Thursday,’ we should have bit our tongue. Harvest has held out a little longer than what we thought, but Gary’s crew in Elkton loaded the final trucks this last Saturday, and today they’ve unloaded them. We are now officially done harvesting for the year, on the 4th of November.

Before the last loads were filled, we actually saw a couple inches of snow on Halloween. It has all disappeared now, thankfully in time to get all our equipment back home and cleaned up. I’m not sure exactly how long we’ll be lucky enough to keep the white stuff away, but I think it’ll hold out until we have things put away.

This last Friday, our local Case IH dealer, Titan Machinery, held an appreciation supper for our crew at Gary’s shop. The company catered in the most delicious barbecue, beans, corn, mac and cookies. Our whole crew made it down, and we enjoyed lots of conversation and catching up. Our crew around home worked hard to clean the shop up. We also used this opportunity with everyone home to pass out Paplow Harvesting hoodies. They are usually a treat for the crew at the end of the season, and they are well earned.

We’re really grateful to all the people at Titan Machinery for all they do for us throughout the season. It was great to see everyone and actually get to relax, talk and share stories.

Paul has already begun cleaning equipment out, blowing it off and washing it down. As more equipment heads this way, we’ll continue working on that until it’s done. With Paul’s wash bay now in operation, it will make cleaning up a lot easier and, in time, a lot less expensive than taking trucks and trailers into the truck wash in town.

I’ve been busy working on getting at least two of our crew campers cleaned out and ready to be winterized. With two trailers out of the way, we’ll have room to pull in the crew campers arriving from South Dakota tomorrow. I know everyone is excited to make their way to the shop and finish up the last few jobs before heading home.

As this is the earliest year I’ve ever seen, it’s always great that we can have our crew home with their families in time for Thanksgiving. A couple of guys have already departed, and I imagine others will be taking off day by day until we’re left with just us. I’m looking forward to things settling down so we can also enjoy Thanksgiving as a family.