Harvest Update

Wow, have I been slacking in the blog department.  It's been a busy summer with a wedding in the family and all my siblings home, haying delayed by rain and a quick trip to the Black Hills and now a long harvest.

We kept thinking it would be an early harvest since we had the crops in early this year, but the wet and cool weather seemed to delay it some. We did start the end of July with the peas.  We didn't have too many acres of those.  The lentils took a bit longer.  They are generally short and not much fun to cut, but they are our cash crop these days with the wheat prices in the toilet.  When you are cutting a good crop and mentally calculate the $$ that are flowing into the grain tank they don't seem so bad.  The wet weather caused a lot of disease, though.  It's always something.

We were plugging along but had a rain delay of about a week.  Not long after we got going again the long-range forecast wasn't looking good so the race was on.  We had already hired some custom cutters to cut some of the neighbor's crop that we usually do.  Then we had some friends bring two combines over to help us finish.  They put in long days and finished the stuff at Opheim late last night (well, except for about 300 acres back at home).  M got home after midnight, had a bite to eat, and it started to rain.  It seemed like there was tension in the air all over the country with everyone trying to get finished up before the storm set in.  The forecast is calling for up to 3" of rain for the next five days.  That kind of moisture can really affect the quality of the wheat.  The price is bad enough anyway and if there are quality issues it will be hard to sell.

All over this area you can see these big white grain bags as farmers are cutting a bumper crop with no place to put it. I think we have at least 10.  The bags cost almost $1000 each and are not reusable.  We also had to buy the apparatus used to fill them.  We had rented one a couple of years ago and no one was a fan, but we really had no other choice with all our bins full.  The guys were pretty proud of themselves when they made a nice, straight uniform bag.  They aren't a perfect solution, though, as they can be easily damaged.  In fact, we have a couple that have been damaged by raccoons already.  Like I said, it's always something.

M's sister and her son came to help with the harvest.  She was here for a week and our nephew was here for two weeks.  Unfortunately, she only got in a couple of days of harvest before rain stopped us.  During the break we preg tested our heifers and got some hay hauled.  Our nephew got a few more days of harvest in when it finally dried out.  He's great help, and we're always happy to have him.

After much thought and discussion we made the decision to build a barn/machine shed this year so it's been fun to watch it going up.  With the expansion of our cow herd our old facilities were becoming inadequate.  We generally keep our machinery up-to-date, but there haven't been any building upgrades (other than grain bins) in quite a few years (like almost 30).  There's a lot of inside work to be done, but it's up!

J has been stressing about the baby coming before we were done with harvest, but now the pressure is off and the little guy can come whenever he feels like it--the due date is only two weeks away!  K and Sawyer have moved back to town from the "summer house".  I always love having them a little closer.  We've had some fun play dates.

I always dread harvest for many reasons, but today I was thinking about the positives.  The biggest positive being getting to have lunch with my husband and sons every day and seeing Sawyer more often.  I do love their company.