Wheat Watch: Season 3 - Harvest Edition

This year's wheat harvest seemed like it took forever.  The best time to harvest wheat is when the humidity is low and the temperature is high.  Typically this isn't a problem in Western Kansas in July.  However, this year we had a little more than a week of cool wet weather right in the middle of harvest.  So what would have taken 12 days ended up taking about three weeks.

The farmers here will tell you that "wheat has 9 lives".  If that's true most of our wheat used about 8.5 of them.  Drought, erratic temperatures, and hail were the reason for most of the wheat attrition.  The funny thing is that there is always one field that stands out and does surprisingly well. 

This was the first year that I wasn't on the combine during harvest.  My new job was to manage the harvest and harvest crew.  So instead of being responsible for one combine, I was responsible for three combines, two grain carts, two semi trucks, and several third party trucking companies.

My first harvest on the farm I told my father-in-law that I had a new job title for him: Manager of Chaos.  I didn't realize how appropriate of a job title that was until this year. 

When harvesting with three combines there is always something that is broke.  So basically my day consisted of running from one combine to the next and fixing things.  It was a lot like juggling; fix a problem throw the combine back into the field and wait for the next one to come back.

When there wasn't a combine to fix there were wheat load tickets and truckers to manage. 

My favorite harvest quote was from a trucker that had just gotten several big loads of wheat and it was the end of the cutting day.  He was from Tennessee so think thick southern accent - "Man.  I'm getting me a shower TONIGHT!"

-Combine Squadron Commander/Assistant Manager of Chaos Ryan
      P.S. - No Dwight. Not Assistant to the manager of Chaos...

Combine Combined

Getting three combines ready for harvest is an interesting kind of chaos.  It is like when you start to clean your basement and you just keep finding more stuff you need to clean.  Only instead of cleaning it's replacing parts and instead of cleaning supplies it's $100 ball bearings other expensive stuff.  So by the time we were done we completely rebuilt the front end of two of our combines. 

When "cleaning" this combine we found a crack in one of the wheels.  So we had to take it off so we could weld it up, and put it back on.

After ordering a ton of parts, then I made it my job to become the parts librarian.  So after some dewy decimation, I had them organized and ready to install.

All in all I think we replaced over 50 ball bearings, 10 chains, 5 belts and a bunch of other things with green paint on them. 

-Combine Part Librarian Ryan

Rain Gauge

It's hard for me to put into words how happy this makes me:
 

-Rain Man Ryan

Godzilla the Strip Tilla

This year before we started planting corn we prepared our fields in a different way.  Instead of using a disc and tilling our entire field we used a strip tiller.  A strip tiller is an implement that only tills "strips" about 8 inches wide through the field.  The strip tiller also has metal bars called ripper shanks that go deep into the ground and break up any compaction in the subsoil.

The benefits of strip tilling are huge.  When tilling up the ground the old way the the disc had to till the entire field three times and then fertilizer had to be applied with a four operation.  With Strip tilling all those operations are competed in one step.  This equates to substantial savings on diesel fuel, time and wear on equipment.

There are other benefits to strip tilling that we are looking forward to realizing.  Only tilling the soil one time means less moisture is lost during the tillage process.  There is also moisture savings throughout the growing season.  By leaving crop residue from the previous season on top of the non tilled ground, less moisture evaporates from the soil.

So what's the downside?  In order to be able to strip till you must have an extremely accurate GPS guidance system.  After all the strip tilling has been completed then the corn seeds have to be planted directly in the center of the 8 inch strip that was tilled.  This requires accuracy, which is expensive.  The other requirement of strip tilling is HORSEPOWER.  A good rule to follow is that it takes 25 horsepower per strip tiller row.   So for an 8 row strip tiller you need a tractor with at least 200 horsepower.  Like accuracy, horsepower is also expensive.

Below is an example of one of our strip tilled fields.  You can see the crop residue on the top of the non tilled strips and you can see where the corn is planted right down the middle of the tilled strip.

-Farmer Ryan

P.S. - You might have guessed from the title, I named our strip tiller Godzilla. 

Full Service

Every winter we service all of vehicles, trucks, and tractors.  That might not sound like that big of a task, but I present the below picture.  It is a pallet of filters.

We have checklists that we go through on all our vehicles and tractors.  Depending on what we find wrong, it can take anywhere from 4 hours to a couple days to completely service each vehicle, truck, or tractor.  Every filter we replace on a tractor we write the date and the hours on the tractor.  I serviced the below tractor on 3/14/14.  I marked the filter accordingly...

Below is a picture of all the stuff that I replaced on my farm pickup.  I replaced the spark plugs, air filter, oil filter, fuel filter, front, and back brakes.

When I went to change the transmission filter I hit a snag.  The GM engineer that designed the transmission failed.  In order to drop the transmission oil pan you have to take off the front drive shaft for the 4 wheel drive and a bracket that holds the shifting cable.

The bracket is pretty much impossible to take off.  So we decided to have our local dealership change the filter for us.  Apparently, I'm not the only one who dislikes this design.  When the dealership went to take off the oil pan they broke a relay inside the transmission...

-Grease Monkey Ryan

Gone With The Wind

You might have noticed all the wind turbines that are along I-70 when you were driving through Kansas.  Let me just say this: they are there for a reason.  Sometimes the wind will be strong enough that it actually starts to blow the topsoil off of our fields.  When this happens we have to rough up the surface of the ground in order to stop the wind erosion.  We had a failed wheat crop on a dry land field. Hooray for drought... So I used the below implement to rough up the ground.  

You can see below where a ridge was formed and some dirt clods were created.  We ran about 20 feet between passes and this was enough to stop the dirt from blowing.

When a big wind storm hits our area it can actually make visibility as bad as blizzard.  Below is a picture I took after the worst of the wind had passed.  It looks like there is a cloud blocking the sunset, but it is actually dust. 

I feel fortunate to be able to start farming when I did.  It's hard to explain how nice it is to not have to be sandblasted dustblasted on a tractor without a cab when we were trying to stop the topsoil from blowing.  This storm also made me feel sorry for all the folks that were farming during the "Dirty Thirties".  They didn't have cabs on their tractors, or modern farming practices that eliminate most of the dust storms. 

-The Dusty Farmer Ryan

My Grain Headaches Suggested Viewing:

• The Dust Bowl by Ken Burns - Click the link if you have Netflix and want to add it to your queue:  If you are a fan of historical documentaries or just want to know more I would suggest checking this one out. 

Where The Wild Things Are

One of the perks of being in a tractor all day is the view.  I get to see all kinds of wildlife and scenery.  The problem is actually getting a picture of animals before they take off. Below are the best wildlife shots I could take in 2013.

A fox:

Some Mule Deer:

My favorite wildlife experience this year has been watching Swainson's Hawks follow my tractor around while I planted corn. When I was pulling the planter I would disturb rabbits and mice from their hiding spots and the hawks would dive bomb them.  One morning I saw a hawk grab a mouse off the ground and throw it up in the air and catch it in its mouth.  That pretty much made my day.

Happy New Years from the farm!

-Wild Thing Watcher Ryan