A Mid-Harvest Update

Harvest is underway. In fact, July 25 was the first day of cutting crop.

We started on the land that Jeff and I are renting, with our yellow peas.  That took a couple days is all, even with hauling all of them straight to town. Peas can crack and break easily if handled too much- every time they are run through a piece of machinery, such as a combine or an auger, they are more likely to sustain a little damage- and the elevator may dock some money off your overall price per bushel if there is too much perceived damage.

After our peas were cut, we moved on to the winter wheat. The majority of our land was seeded to winter wheat.  The variety we seeded this year is called Carter. It's a darker, reddish tan than many of the other popular varieties, which tend to be more of a champagne gold.

The Carter really grew into a great crop.  I think the guys all had a good time cutting it.  Some good decision-making, combined with dodging the worst of the hail storms but catching some well-timed rains really created a boon of a crop.  Jeff and I are very excited to be cutting such a nice crop of our rented land in our first harvest.  We know every year is not going to be this good, and we feel very lucky and blessed, but it sure is reassuring in our first harvest to feel like we are on the right path.

I tried to take a lot of photos while we were cutting on our place.  This post displays some of my favorites. I am planning to try to do an album of harvest photos on facebook, so for those of you who follow me on facebook, look for that in the coming days.

Harvest is an extremely busy time for everyone.  I have been helping with evening meals, and when we were cutting at our place, I helped Jeff move vehicles around from one field to the next, and also helped move the auger from one grain bin to the next.

There is a wide variety of machinery and vehicles used on a farm, and especially during harvest. I am now more glad than ever that my first vehicle was a manual transmission. I can remember mom and dad giving me driving lessons and feeling so frustrated-- thinking it would just be easier to learn an automatic! Now, I am really glad I know how to drive a manual because it has certainly come in handy driving some of these old trucks. I secretly wonder if Jeff had that as a requirement for any woman he dated and hoped to bring home to the farm one day...

Our harvest crew included Jeff, Tom, myself, and Stan, our landlord/friend (the person from whom we are renting our farmland), and another guy named Alan, who also has just a little bit of land in this area. The crew was pretty efficient and worked well together.

There are so few business-situations where family members and neighbors across generations work together. This is one of the many unique aspects of family farming. Again, I feel lucky to be in a family that works together so harmoniously.

 Another great thing about harvest is that, because you are spending so much time in a combine or truck, you get a lot of time to observe the scenery.  I think we live in a pretty beautiful location.

And one last photo, for now.  Stan created this marker and placed it where the town of Goldstone, MT used to be, which is the land that Jeff and I now farm, renting it from him.  Tom and Stan are in those combines in the background.  The town may be gone, but the land is definitely still productive.