“Nineteen
percent?” The girl affirmed, but she
probed the load again. The results were
the same.
I was a bit
incredulous. There was 150 bushels of too-wet
wheat, I knew. But there was 360 bushels
of very dry wheat from last year, too.
I inched into
the elevator and went around to the back of the truck to watch as the manager
periodically dipped a one-gallon bucket into the grain flowing from the
tailgate. His test of that sampling
brought the moisture down to about 14%, but it was still too wet. I got docked.
The wet wheat
had been cut Sunday. I cut another 75
bushels on Tuesday. This time, we took a
peanut butter jar full of wheat to the tester. The girl said 15% moisture.
Still too wet.
Twenty-four
hours later, the peanut butter jar held wheat that tested 11% moisture. Really?
“What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours.”
I still had 75
bushels of the 15% moisture wheat on the truck, so I dumped three combine bins
full onto the wetter wheat. We started
hauling to the bin. I forgot I had
dumped the 15% load on the truck. I put
three more dumps on the truck, plus a little more, because the truck didn’t
look full. So harvest began on
Wednesday, July 17.
On Thursday
morning, we took the truck to town. The
moisture content was quite acceptable.
The surprise came when I looked at the weight results. I had 580 bushels on, about an 80-bushel
overload.
In addition to
the miscalculation I made when loading the truck, the wheat weighed 62 pounds
per bushel, which means the same volume of wheat weighed more than the standard
of 60 pounds per bushel. So far the
truck has survived the overload. I vowed
to do better.
Meanwhile, the old
GMC made many trips to the bin carrying 150-bushel loads. The wheat flowed, but the acres reluctantly
disappeared. Ground speed was slow. Every 20-25 minutes, the combine would dump a
75-bushel load.
On Saturday, the
bin was full. Decision time: haul to town and accept a lower price, or
rent a neighbor’s bin and hope for a higher organic price. The negatives: I don’t have the equipment to empty Jack’s
bin. Jack’s bin is in rather tight
quarters, hard to maneuver trucks, especially the semis that will probably haul
it out of there.
Jack’s bin
has a pit with a 16-foot tube leading down into the bottom of the pit. My bin-unloading auger is 15 feet. I opted to use Jack’s bin. So Saturday afternoon, we moved the tractor
and auger down there. The weather was
threatening, so I decided to cut wheat while I could and dump it on the big
truck, which had stood idle the whole time we were dumping into our bin.
On Sunday
morning, Brother John and I took the GMC on its first trip approximately six
miles to Jack’s bin. We sat up the auger
and the first grain landed in the pit.
It would take a while to fill that pit with the 150-bushel loads.
While we were
filling our bin, John could take the two combine dumps to the bin and be back
in time to take the combine’s load without me having to wait. But making the 12-mile round trip took
time. I dumped one and sometimes two bin
loads on the big truck while he was making the trip.
The GMC gas gauge
no longer works. John ran out of gas
twice. The first time, the Goodwife came
to his rescue. He called her using cell
phones. That would not have worked in
1947, when the truck was new. The gas
gauge worked then.
John came to his own rescue the second time
he ran out of gas, using the 2-gallon can of gas he carried in the cab with
him, along with his tools. Fortunately,
there was little need for the tools.
On Tuesday morning
and Wednesday morning, we dumped 500-bushel loads into Jack’s bin. The pit filled up and the wheat climbed up
the wall of the bin.
On Wednesday
afternoon, John hauled 35 bushels to the bin, and the organic portion of the
crop was harvested. We finished up
Wednesday afternoon, July 27, by cutting the “buffer zones”, that 35-foot strip
bordering land not under my control, where forbidden chemicals could be used
and might drift or leach onto my field. There
are two zones on this field, the border with the neighbors to the north, and
around wind generator number 119 standing in that field plus the road leading
to it.
What was left of
the buffer zones (the 19% moisture load had come from the buffer zones, too)
netted 150 bushels. John hauled that to
town Thursday morning, and the wheat is all in the bin plus the 150 bushels on
the big truck to be used for seed this fall.
The header went back to its resting place in the barn on Friday afternoon. The
combine proper sits in the shed, partially cleaned, where it can’t get wet if
it should decide to rain, and I can finish the job soon.
In the bdginning
Almost done
Can't see the ground between rows
All done!
We had only one mechanical breakdown that required much time to fix. The new part, asickle-drive ball joint, took a day to be delivered from Denver to Flagler. A part salvaged from a neighbor's derelict combine took a couple of hours to change out and got us through the rest of harvest.
All-in-all, it was a very successful and trouble-free harvest. We should have Thanksgiving in July!
