Kimberly Neumiller

 

My name is Kimberly Neumiller from Neumiller Harvesting. I grew up in the small town of Fessenden, North Dakota, which is 25 miles from where I live now. My husband, Mychal, and I along with our two kids, Bentley and Payzlee, live near Bowdon, North Dakota.

 

Neumiller Harvesting is a family-owned operation that started in 1984 with Roger Neumiller combining for people around home and continued when his sons were old enough. Mychal and his cousin were the first ones to take the journey south in 2004 with one combine. That is when Neumiller Harvesting was created.

 

As the years went on Neumiller Harvesting added a few more machines and more employees. Today, Roger, Mychal, Cole, and Logan, along with their families, start the harvest journey in Texas with 10 Case combines, three Haul Master grain carts, and 15 semis. We are usually split up with machines running in four different areas. Our run continues through Oklahoma to Kansas, over to Colorado, then up through Nebraska and back to North Dakota.

 

We harvest spring wheat, winter wheat, canola, and durum in the summer and soybeans and corn in the fall. In the past years we have also done lentils, chick peas, and barley. Our fall harvest stays in North Dakota and we usually add a few more employees, another combine, and a grain cart. So, in total we will have 11 Case combines and four Haul Master grain carts running during fall harvest. In addition to the family, we will have about 20 employees. I am always treating them as one of my own because I know what it is like to be away from your family.

 

We are so grateful for all of our employees; some have been with us for six years and some employees will stay during the winter months to help in the shop or truck.

 






Harvest may be over, but sometimes I feel my life is just as hectic if not more than the summer. I love living where we do, but it’s a long ways from things. The kids go to school 25 miles from our house, but most of their sports practices are an additional 20 miles from school. In the fall, for football, I would have to go to the school to pick up the Bowdon kids and take them to practice because it is not a school-affiliated program. Thankfully, Karlie, myself and another Bowdon mom did some carpooling so we don’t have






Mr. Winter is about to show his face here in North Dakota. It’s been in the '50s the past few days, which has been wonderful, but that’s about to change. I know it’s the end of November, and I should be ready for the snow and cold, but that first week is a hard adjustment, especially when the weather has been nice, and it is currently raining. We have been getting rain for about 12 hours now, and tonight we are possibly going to get 4-8 inches of snow and strong winds. Our temperatures will drop to the single digits.  This


On May 14, Mychal, the kids and I, along with a few crew members, loaded up and headed south. The kids missed the last two days of school, but we wanted to make sure we arrived in time to attend the USCHI safety day in Wichita Falls, Texas. Even though the kids missed two days of school, they learned basic first aid, how to be safe around equipment and got to hang out with some friends!  



As always, our first stop is a bit overwhelming for everyone, and it takes a few days to get the kinks worked out. We didn’t


It has been a very long time since we have had our harvest season end in October, but this year we finished the last field just in time to go trick or treating with the kids. It is Nov. 4, and we still have no snow, which is also unusual, but I am not complaining.



The last load of corn for the season



Karlie and I cleaned out the first crew camper on Oct. 13, which is way too early, but it was very nice to clean a camper up when it’s not freezing or snowing! We had campers coming home


We have been covering a lot of ground the past week. The weather has been in our favor this fall, and it is allowing us to get a lot of beans cut in a short amount of time.







Mychal finished corn in Turtle Lake on Friday and moved that combine to Fessenden, North Dakota, to work on beans again. I went out to help them move stuff home, so my camper is finally back in my yard after spending five months on the road.  The corn was averaging 150 bushels an acre.  



Photo credit Mike Costa. Beans in Finley, North Dakota



Roger finished beans


We have nine machines running on beans, and one combine is working on corn.  



Mychal finished beans in Butte, North Dakota, and brought one machine home to help Cole with our own beans. He sent the other one back to Turtle Lake to start on corn.  



Photo taken by Everett Finegan.



Roger and Cole started on our beans last week with three machines and ran for a few days before Roger loaded two up to head to Finely, North Dakota. Our beans are averaging 35-45 bushels per acre, and the beans in Finley are averaging 45-55 bushels per acre. 



Photo taken by


September was here and gone in the blink of an eye, and our soybean harvest has officially started.



Mychal moved from Westhope to Turtle Lake, North Dakota, to start on soybeans. He has been cutting beans for the past four days with two machines. The beans in this area are having some pretty decent yields as they are on irrigated pivots. They may have done a little better, but they have been hailed on a few different times during the growing season.  We have noticed that some are ripe and about to shell out, but some of the other fields aren’t


The beans here in North Dakota are about ready to be combined. It’s amazing how fast they turned this year. We still have combines in Westhope combining canola and some around Langdon working on canola as well.



Some of our employees fueling and reminiscing about their day.



Mychal moved out of South Heart and took those machines to Westhope to start cutting for another farmer. They had a few days of cutting before we had to shut down because the dew in the mornings was getting bad, and then we had a few days of rain.  We were hoping to start back up this week


Neumiller Harvesting has been in business for twenty years. A few of the farmers from our first few years are still allowing us to combing for them today. Mychal and one of his cousins loaded up a combine and headed to Vernon Texas where they had no job and no employees. Mychal’s brothers were still in school so they didn’t head south until school was out for the year. Mychal and his cousin found, David Belew, who was looking for a harvester and we are still combing for him twenty years later. Once they realized they had a