Harvest 2015

     Four hundred eighty-eight bushels, the ticket said.  Really?  But the truck was heaped up pretty high.  It should have been at least 500  bushels. 

     Then I saw the weight-per-bushel—52 pounds.  Normal is 60 pounds per bushel.  Light wheat takes a bigger volume to make a bushel, if that makes sense, since a bushel is a measure of volume.

      But wheat is bought and sold by weight.  So if you sold a bushel of wheat in a one-bushel bucket, the buyer would protest because she only got 52 pounds.  The seller would have to either discount the price per bushel, or get a bigger bucket to hold enough extra wheat to make up the missing eight pounds.  

     The bad news is I may have trouble peddling it to an organic buyer due to the substandard weight.  The good news is that harvest is done, and I will have some wheat to sell, to the local elevator, if nowhere else.

     The grain bin is full to the brim.  That should be 3400 bushels, but with the light test weight, it will come in closer to 3000 bushels.  I had to haul 488 bushels of organic wheat and mix it in with the common ordinary stuff.   I’ll get the common ordinary price, too.  Oh well.

     The bottom line for this year’s harvest is about the same as last year’s yield-wise.  This year’s crop had twice the straw, twice the heads that had to go through the combine to get the same amount of wheat.

     The late May freeze is probably to blame for the lack of yield while rust from the wet spring promoted rust. Rust shuts the wheat plant down earlier than normal, causing shrunken kernels and the light test weight.

     One weird thing about this year, the least productive soil produced the best wheat.  Traditionally, the least productive soil is in the very center of the field where the old oneway disk leaves a dead furrow and down the corners, the same dead furrow.

     The soil is shallower in the dead furrows and has less nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous.  As a result of the phosphorous deficiency, the dead furrows are usually a few days behind the rest of the field.  Apparently, the immaturity meant the wheat in the dead furrows wasn’t vulnerable to the freeze in May.  My theory, anyway.

      You can’t see the ground in the picture.  I couldn’t see it from the combine, either.  I had to slow down to cut this strip, the center of the field.  I didn’t get nearly as far before the bin was full.  “Tis an ill wind that blows no good.”  It was gratifying to see the old dead furrows do well.

    Harvest brought the usual headaches, weather, machine break-downs.

      Smoke, or humidity? Forest fires in Canada, they say. You can see the weeds that would get really out of hand if we got a prolonged wet spell.  Nothing like a good crop of weeds to make harvest really miserable.  There were plenty of weeds throughout the field.  Fortunately, we had only two light showers and one rain of over half an inch. 

    The combine had a couple of problems.  The first was a worn sprocket and chain, double chain, actually.

 

     I heard the chain slipping on the sprocket.  I looked everywhere for the noise (it makes a horrible noise).  The sprocket was in pretty poor shape by the time I looked in the right place.  Changing the sprocket would be a job, plus finding a replacement would be both challenging and expensive.

    I paid $40 for ten feet of chain, just a single strand instead of the double strand.  I ran the chain fairly tight, not over-tight and had no further trouble.

    The second more persistent problem was with the sickle drive.  After an hour or two of cutting, the new sections found their niche and the pounding sound of rivets striking the guards went away.  I thought I was home free.

      It had just dried out enough to cut about 5 p.m. Wednesday.  About 7 p.m. the sickle stopped.  I was cutting nothing.  Neighborly and his crew were just across the road.  I knew the trick to getting the arm off the combine, having done it to get the sickle in and out for rebuilding.  I threw the broken arm in the pickup and headed next door.  (Neighborly is a good welder.)

    He looked at the break and resolved to give welding it back together a try.  Off we went to his welding shop.  When he was done, far from submerging the hot metal into water to cool it, he insisted we cover it up for the return trip so cold air wouldn’t hit it.  Before we could get out of his yard, rain drops began to fall.  “Sure glad we covered that up,” he said.

 

     The shower brought harvest to a halt.  Thirteen percent moisture wheat soon became 14% and 15% moisture, too wet to bin.

     Neighborly and his crew all had an idea where I could find a replacement part from derelicts in the area.  They made a call or two and I made two or three calls, and the next morning, Brother Harry and I headed north and removed the exact same part from a dead combine.  It was just in case the weld didn’t hold.

      On Thursday, the sickle stopped again.  I didn’t even get out and look.  I pulled the combine up next to the shop and prepared to change the arm.  But the arm was still in tact.  A weld that I had made on the sickle pitman some years ago came undone.

  

    That was a much easier faster repair.  I rewelded the break.  I didn’t put any cold water on it either.  Neighborly called that night to see if his weld was still working.  He was happy to hear my story, my weld that failed, not his.     

     Friday, I was about an hour from finishing harvest, when the sickle stopped again.  This time, it really was the arm that broke again.  The weld didn’t fail, but it broke anew right next to the weld, which often happens, I’m told.

     It was a two-hour job to take the bearings out of the broken arm and replace the badly-worn bearings in the backup one.  Instead of finishing about 5 p.m., I finished a little after 7 p.m.

     This time, when Neighborly called, I had to give him the good-news (weld didn’t break) bad-news (broke next to weld) story.  He said he would make me a new one out of steel to replace the cast iron one this winter when he had time, one that would do the job much better.  I promised to remind him of that. 

     Moral:  It’s important to have good neighbors.   

     So harvest came to an end.  Now the cleaning and putting away equipment.

      

Jumping Through Organic Hoops

      Harvest began this week.  By Thursday, the sickle job was done, the trucks’ tires checked, the granary vacuumed and the joint between floor and wall scraped and caulked with silicone.

     As I fueled and greased the combine, the neighbor’s hired guns pulled into the field south of me and began cutting the wheat. (Paladin wouldn’t stand a chance against three 36’ headers.)

      “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”  Certainly not the last to cut wheat.

     I finished my combine duties and tried to persuade myself to take my time eating lunch.  “Now Stevie, . . .” I could hear my mother saying, launching into the sermon on proper diet and eating too fast.  

     I didn’t do too bad at taking my time.  When I came out of the house following lunch, the combines in the field south of me were standing idle.  Hmmm.  Must be too wet yet.  That takes the urgency out of things.

    Nevertheless, I had things to do to satisfy the organic rules.  A little damp wheat would be a small price to pay for getting those things done.  Off to the field I went.

      I whacked a double swath around windmill #119 and its access road jutting into the west end of the field like a giant appendix.  The purpose?  Buffer strips must separate the organic crop from any neighbor who might use chemicals such as herbicides or fertilizer.  I declared a 35’ buffer strip in my application.  A double swath with my 19’ header ought to meet that requirement.

      With the old double boiler pan, I scooped into the half loaded bin for a sample, dumped the wheat left in the combine bin on the big truck, shut off the combine, walked to the garage, and headed to town with my double boiler sample.  12.4% flashed up on the digital readout.

     I was good to go.  But first, I had to call on friend and neighbor Willie to return the sickle machine I had borrowed two weeks ago.  Sure enough, they were cutting wheat.  They normally get started a couple of days before I do.  

     We had time to sit in the shade of the grain bin and catch up each other on our lives.  But then it really was time to start cutting wheat.  I put the sickle machine back in his shop where I found it and off I took.

     Still a few things organic to take care of.  One more buffer strip to cut, being the first order of business.  To the north border I went.  As I had cut around the windmill road and tower, I had visions of needing more bin space, the wheat was that good.

      The trip down the north side and back, a mile total, yielded little more than the windmill road trip.  There were plenty of weeds, too.  Back to reality.  That concluded the buffer strip harvesting.  That half bin load went onto the big truck.

     Now the combine had to be cleansed.  I dropped elevator caps and brought out the air hose.  A quick blowing off of the still-fairly-clean combine ensued.  Start the machine up and let it run a few seconds, follow that with another quick air treatment.

     Then the ritual that indicated harvest was really about to start:  I closed the elevator caps and applied duct tape to the small fissures that allow a few seeds to escape.  That sealed it.

     Still a couple of organic requirements to go.  I pulled in and cut along the west side of the field up to the windmill road and back, netting maybe 15 bushels.  That got dumped on the big truck.  Now, the combine was suitably purged.  One more purge and I would be ready to go.

    This time, I went to the northwest corner where the buffer strip was harvested.  I went around the perimeter of the field and barely made it back to the granary without spilling wheat out of the combine bin.  That’s a mile and a half, and not very good wheat, but then it was the outside round and I had to contend with weeds.

     This load went onto the little “Chuckle Truck”, the ’47 GMC.  The Chuckle Truck backed up to the hopper end of Neighborly’s auger, borrowed for the second year.  The big truck went under the delivery end of the auger, the Ford tractor backed up to the auger’s pto and the load was transferred from GMC to Dodge in short order.

     And now the organic hoops were nearly all jumped through.  Well, all the physical ones.  All of this activity has to be documented.  The combine and auger were purged. The big truck would go to town with its impure load and then it would get a good vacuuming but not today. As the sun was slowly sinking in the west I decided to call it a day. 

     Then a funny thing happened.  With the sunset brilliantly lighting white windmill towers, red barn, silver grain bin, white buildings, it began to rain.  A magical rainbow straddled the eastern horizon, and still it rained.

     Mother Nature just confirmed my duct-taping of the elevator caps.  It was harvest for sure, the wheat ripe and dry, and the rain came.

     (It was only three tenths of an inch out of a sunlit sky.  We did get going Friday afternoon.)

       

Stampede!

      I knelt in the rain-softened earth, my mind filled with rivets and hold-downs, and wear plates, all things sickle.  I looked beneath the sickle bar and over the bar trying to find the friction point that caused the sickle to stick.

    It was a tedious and strenuous exercise.  The wear plate and hold-downs happen every foot along the bar.  The wear plate holds the sickle bar forward, while the hold-down keeps the sickle down on the ledger plates.    

    When the sickle section crosses over the leger plate, it snips through the straw of whatever crop is being harvested.   Having replaced the sickle sections (all 76 of them) and having worked the bar with new sections back through the sickle guards, I was adjusting and tightening the wear plates and the hold-downs. 

     Tighten one set of hold-down / wear plate, then try working the sickle back and forth to be sure things aren’t in a bind.  It’s a lot of up and down and craning the neck to see where things are rubbing against each other when the attempt to move the sickle back and forth either failed or was too hard.

     So there I was down on my knees looking for friction when I heard a strange noise.  At first, I thought it was a big truck or machine with a very good muffler.  I couldn’t hear the roar of the engine.  I could hear it thumping along over uneven ground, and a low unfamiliar hum.  

    I ducked down to peer under the combine header, but I could see nothing.  I got up to try to look over the header.  No luck with that.  So I moved to the end and away from the header entirely and then I saw it—about 100 black yearling steers headed through the yard.

     They were headed north, towards the wheat.  I jumped on the old golf cart and headed north in a futile effort to flank them and send them back south.  About half of them turned back, but the leaders were already into the wheat.

    I dismounted and headed into the wheat afoot.  I could see I would be unable to get far enough athwart of them to turn them, so back to the golf cart.  I traded it for the 4X4 and ventured out into the damp grass to drive the trailing bunch back towards the pasture before they decided to visit the wheat. 

       All the while I had been desperately dialing the neighbors on my cell phone to call for help.  Finally somebody answered.  I had a bunch of them getting close to the open pasture gate.  The steers had “opened” the gate by crowding against it till the gate post broke, enabling them to escape in the first place.

       In order to check the gate, I had to leave the herd, see that the gate was open, then get back on the north side of critters.  I had lost track of those in the wheat field.  Then I saw them.  They had gone all the way to the north side of the wheat and were helping themselves to the neighbors’ corn. 

      Neighborly came along in time to drive that bunch out of the cornfield and back towards the pasture.  Unfortunately, they went a second time through the east end of the wheat on their way home.

      As Neighborly brought the wheat invaders along, I had my bunch near the corner with the open gate.  They were hesitant and wouldn’t go the last thirty yards out of the CRP grass, through the gate and into the pasture.  They stood there, eyeing me, getting nervous, considering jumping the one-wire fence into another neighbor’s wheat. 

     So I backed off.  Two more helpers arrived.  Soon both herds were consolidated and the bovine sensed they had lost the battle.  Through the gate they rushed.  They finished off the gate post and took out the corner post as they all tried to be the first one through the opening at the same time. 

       The last two cowboys to arrive then went to work rebuilding the corner.  That was accomplished in fairly short order.  The gate was closed and that should have been the end of the story.

     But wait.  Earlier in the week, I had been thoroughly vetted by an inspector from the Colorado Department of Agriculture to determine if I had fulfilled the requirements to qualify the wheat crop (yes, the very same wheat in which the cattle had just taken a stroll) as organic.  The interview started at 9 a. m. and the inspector left after 2 p. m.       

       I learned a few things.  One thing I learned, there must be a ninety-day period between manure application and harvest.  We even took a trip down the line between the pasture and the summer fallow to be sure manure couldn’t run from the pasture into the crop (future crop in this case).

      Well, if you know anything about cattle, you know I had a recent manure application on my would-be organic wheat.  What to do?  Pretend it didn’t happen?  Couldn’t do that. 

    I put in a call to the head organic lady at CDA.  She, not a secretary, answered after the second ring.  I told her briefly what happened.

      “How many cattle?” she wanted to know first.

      “Thirty or so.”  Well, maybe a few more.

      “How long were they in there?”

     “Thirty or minutes or less.”

     “Oh,” she said.  “That’s not so bad.  If it were three days, that would be different.  I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

     A sigh of relief.  In my head I had calculated, July 1^st, August 1^st, September 1^st, October 1^st.

The calculation disappeared.  Maybe the closing of the gate would be the end of the renegade cattle affair after all.

      It won’t be the end of my organic worries, I’m sure.  The sickle awaits my attention.   

July 4, 2015

      “To see Old Glory fan the breeze”

     The colors flew.  Otherwise, things went on the same.  Top priority wen t to getting ready for harvest.

      Earlier in the week, the grain bin got a little attention.  It needed it.

 

     The moisture got into the floor auger channel.  I wonder if wheat sprouts are as tasty as bean sprouts.  I didn’t try it.

 

       Tile spade, hoe, and putty knife got most of it.  A vacuuming will finish the deal when it has had time to dry out a little.

 

     The wheat slowly progresses towards ripeness.  The “blow ridge” is pretty much dried out.  The rest of the field remains green.

     The wheat itself has three levels of straw length and head development.  The tallest stalks have mostly empty heads, victims of the May freeze, maybe. 

     The mid-level stalks seem normal.  But beneath the top two levels is a third level of still-green heads.  The lower level heads may delay harvest if they have grain in them.  Will it be a good yield?  It’s difficult to say.  Neighborly says we will know when we hear the grain hitting the combine grain bin.

     On this Fourth, Old Glory wasn’t the only colorful thing.  The rose bush showed its appreciation of the wet spring and finally some warm weather.

      I divided my time between harvest preparation and the summer fallow.  Eight tenths of rain earlier this week revived some weeds that should have died from the last operation.  So back to it I went.

     The old combine sickle needed new teeth.  The clever machine makes quick work of the job, if the machine operator doesn’t run out of gas. 

     One run through knocks off the old sections by sheering the rivets off.  That was enough for one day.  The sheered-off rivets have to be punched out of the sickle bar.

      Then back to the machine which puts a taylor-made head on the new rivets holding the new sections.  Twenty-five new sections were enough for one day. 

 

     It’s a morning job.  When the shade disappears, it’s time to find a less-strenuous task.  There are plenty such tasks.  For one, the yard needs a lot of mowing.  So off I go.