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.)