Wheat Harvest 2012

Since we got some rain last night the wheat harvest was put on hold for a day or so, giving me a chance to catch you up on how it's going.

Well, this spring has been a busy one. After getting the corn planted we went strait into vaccinating all the cattle, build some new fences in some of the pastures and baling some lots of hay! In the span of about 2 weeks we probably baled about 1,800 large round bales of hay. And on top of all that the wheat got ready to harvest about two weeks earlier than normal, because of the warmer than normal temps we had this spring. So needless to say, there has been no slowing around here.

Well harvest got started last Friday afternoon. The combines pulled into the field and we started cutting, stopped on Sunday and then have gone strong all this week until today since we got about an inch of rain over night and it's all a little too wet to go. Thanks to the warmer than normal spring temps, the harvest is about two weeks or so earlier than normal, so even though the combines weren't going today the guys were still busy out there getting hay hauled and getting everything ready to start planting soybeans after the wheat is harvested.

I have been busy here in the house too, trying to sort through all of Chester's clothes and figure out what fits and what we will be wearing over the summer....

It's a never ending process!!

Ok, back to wheat...

We have been looking forward to this years harvest for a while now, cause it has been looking so good.

I took this a few days before the wheat got ready. By the time we were harvesting the wheat the bales were all gone and replaced by cattle.

There is a special scientific way to tell if the wheat is ready to harvest.

Take a head of it,

Shell it,

And pop it into your mouth and chew it.

Basically if it's crunchy it's ready.

Caleb and Pop were discussing if the wheat was "crunchy" enough...

And it was cause just a couple hours later they pulled in and they were off!

In all honesty they can tell a lot by chewing it. But after the cut some I head to the grain elevator to have the moisture tested. If the wheat isn't dried down enough you will get docked so much money off what you sell it for. Also if there is to much moisture in the grain when storing it, then the grain can spoil and will be no good.

In these pics Caleb was down digging in the soil to see if there was enough moisture to start planting beans. And there was, but there wasn't anyone to run the planter so it's gonna have to wait.

If he knows I'm taking his picture I will usually get a big smile from him.

If we have the man power we will usually have the combines unload on the go. You wouldn't believe how much time it saves during harvest.

And sometimes you can only get to one side of the truck so the will just do a chain unload.

So when we pulled into this field Calvin was stopped with the hopper fully loaded and instead of just pulling under the auger Caleb made the combine move to where he was going with the grain cart and when Calvin had to stop again to unload the wheat went spilling over the top. So Caleb climbed on top and they started pushing as much as they could back into the header so they could save it.

FYI: It's a lot easier to squat down and get these pictures when your not pregnant.

But when you are down there getting those pictures make sure the wind is blowing the right direction, cause if it's not you will have all this everywhere and boy is it itchy!!

So as of right now I think we are somewhere close to being about half done with wheat harvest and so far it's been going GREAT!! We are averaging somewhere around 70 bushels / acre on most of the fields. We have a few fields that we pastured cattle on that will probably only average about 40-50 bushels / acre, but in normal years 40-50 bushels is great in this part of the country, so there's no complaints here!

Alright, I need to get back to doin' some stuff around the house before my little man wakes back up.

Later,

JP