Dad helped Brandon, James, and I get started in Chadron and then he went back home to begin cutting our own wheat with our old TR98 combine. Along with the help of my uncle and aunt, my dad and mom having been whittling away on...
To our relief, we were able work our tails off and finish in Imperial earlier this week. We’ve been short-handed lately, running with a crew of only four people. With two combines, one grain cart, two semis, a service truck and a pickup, we are...
Thursday did not go quite as smoothly as I had hoped for in my previous post, but my ultimate wish did come true since we were lucky enough to get back to harvesting wheat again! My mom always says you have to keep having faith...
Before we head out to the field today I wanted to share some positive affirmations with everyone. My hope for the day is that our field is completely dry with no mud, the sample comes back at 13% moisture and our combines are kicking up...
It seems to be the general consensus among a number of harvest crews scattered between the Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado borders that the weather does not want to cooperate with us for the time being. Imperial, our current stop, has seen many rounds of rain during the...
The entire state of Kansas is officially marked off of our list now! Hoxie ended up being a very satisfactory stop for the Roland crew. Most of the fields averaged around 75 bushels per acre as we got into some outstanding wheat the last 3...
Since my last post Roland Harvesting has been staying extremely busy. The wheat finally ripened up enough for us to continue harvesting around Plainville and the nearby town of Zurich. The grain elevator, Midland Marketing Coop, in Zurich was very helpful as they worked with...
We ran into some green wheat at the beginning of this past weekend and unfortunately we’re still waiting on some of it to turn. Most of the fields are ripe but there are a fair amount of green kernels still scattered throughout the fields. We...
The last couple days have been typical harvest for the Roland crew. We’ve been able to cut and haul a lot of wheat but in the process of doing so we have also had many random breakdowns. From sickles breaking on the headers (due to harvesting short crops this season) to a brake canister needing to be replaced on one of the semis to a chain breaking on the grain cart we sure have been keeping our mechanic, Jason, busy! Most of the breakdowns have been fairly minor, but having to stop and fix something is always time consuming, especially when multiple things break throughout the day.
To our luck, Mother Nature has decided to cooperate with us lately. A couple days ago we moved north to the Great Bend and Hoisington, Kan. area where we were able to pick up a little work from an old-time friend and customer, which was greatly appreciated. The wheat was ripe enough to begin cutting, to our relief. Things went well there and we were able to finish up in a timely fashion. The wheat in that area was yielding about 30 to 40 bushels per acre. The only complication we had was an accidental run-in with some old deer antlers. The antlers literately pierced through the steering tire and we had to take it to town to patch it up. Who would have guessed that something as harmless as a buck shedding his antlers in a field could cause us a whole afternoon of grief!
Yesterday we moved near Hays, Kan. and were able to begin harvesting there as well. However, we got sprinkled out in the afternoon but hope to get started up again soon.
All lined up in Great Bend, Kan. before we unloaded