And so Harvest 2015 has begun! Captain spent the last week making necessary repairs to the combine, the bean head, and the semi we use to haul our grain. We both love this time of year because he gets to do what he loves, and I don’t have him underfoot in the house all the time. I love my husband, honest I do, but 24/7 togetherness gets to be a bit much sometimes! Can I get an amen?!
Some background. We grow corn and soybeans. Corn is easy, for the most part. Soybeans are a pain in Captain’s butt. They are high maintenance. With corn, you just plunk it in the ground, throw some fertilizer at it, kill the weeds, and it just does its thing over the summer.
Soybeans...that’s another story altogether. Because we rotate our crops (corn one year, beans the next year), before Captain can even start planting beans, the corn ground needs to be worked up to break up the corn stalks from last year. Then we need to apply a pre-emergence herbicide to give the little seeds a fighting chance as they pop through the dirt. Only after all of that is it planting time.
Once the little beanie-weenies are sprouted, then it’s back for a shot of a different herbicide. A month later, it’s back in the field again to spray for bugs. It’s a long, drawn-out process.
Plus, picking beans is dirty. You’ve all seen combines in the bean fields this time of year, and there is a cloud of dust surrounding the machine. Yeah, try working in that or breathing all that crap in.
The nice thing about picking beans is that it goes quick. An acre of land will produce anywhere from 30 to 60 bushels of beans. In contrast, that same acre of land would produce anywhere from 180 to 220 bushels of corn. Do the math on how often the 200-bushel grain tank on the combine fills up with beans versus fills up with corn.
Captain says he doesn’t like growing beans for all of the above reasons, but you’d never be able to prove it by me when I see him heading for the field every morning with a big old smile on his face and a spring in his step.
My part in harvest is usually very peripheral. I keep the home fires burning which might include making and delivering meals to the field, running for parts, or helping move equipment from one field to another. Please, people, please refer to the Rural Rush Hour blog for a reminder here.
Moving to a different field is a monumental effort. Captain drives the combine to the new field, and I follow him or meet him there, depending on how far away it is. We are fairly far-flung and we might be going from Kasson to Oronoco. That’s a long freaking drive in a machine that only tops out at 30 mph!! Anyway, after the combine gets moved, I haul Captain (or whomever he has helping him) back to the field to get the tractor and grain cart and they drive that to the new field….also at a max of 30 mph. Once again, I haul someone back to the field to get the semi and move that to the new field. Finally, I haul everybody back to the previous field to get various personal vehicles, and off they go while I head home.
If we are making three to four trips back and forth between fields that are 30 miles apart, this process can take upwards of two to three hours. I get a lot of time with my car stereo on these trips, which is a nice change since I don’t have a radio in the house. If everything times out well, and Captain has enough warm bodies, we can move it all in one trip in a convoy. There’s an impressive site! Combine followed by a pickup with the bean head on a trailer followed by the tractor and grain cart followed by a semi, and lastly it would be me bringing up the rear. It looks something like this:
Again, that’s not our crew because...hey….I’m driving the caboose in our train and can’t take a picture! But you get the idea. Multiply the pack-it-up-and-move-to-a-new-field scenario by ten or twelve, and you have our routine for the months of October and November.
Delivering meals to the field can be quite the production as well, and it often looks like the above picture...although that is not our crew. Sometimes Captain packs a lunch box. Sometimes I pick up burgers or subs and deliver those. Once in awhile, if I am feeling generous, I will make sandwiches and deliver them to the field if I can remember who likes white versus wheat bread, who likes butter versus mayo, and who wants cheese and who doesn’t. Throw a couple of sandwiches in each box, a bag of chips, and a bottle of water, and everybody is happy hopefully. Gotta keep the crew fueled up and going!
Sometimes if I am otherwise occupied by this thing I call a job, Captain’s mom gets dragged into the chauffeur role. She enjoys it because it keeps her in the game, so to speak, and brings back memories of when she did the same thing for Captain’s dad.
Once in a while Captain is lucky and Young Man is available to help out driving the grain cart. Using a grain cart saves Captain time driving back and forth across the field to dump the grain into the semi; he can unload the grain tank into the grain cart on the fly and keep going. This takes some solid precision on the part of the grain cart operator because he (or she...but not me) has to drive the tractor and cart at exactly the same speed as Captain in the combine AND he has to maintain a safe distance from the combine so as to avoid a collision. Captain says that Young Man is far and away the best grain cart operator he’s ever had.
Everybody has their “job” for fall harvest whether integral or peripheral. We always hope for a bountiful year, but more than that, we pray that it is a safe harvest for everybody who has a hand in it. Make it your job this fall to wave at everyone you see driving a tractor, combine, or truck on the road this fall!
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