YES! We were able to get started cutting wheat on Monday. As you can see from the temperature in  Lakin on that day, it was plenty warm. Today (Tuesday) was hot (101), as well, and HORRIBLY windy!

The wheat we’re cutting is irrigated so it’s yielding a lot better than the dry land wheat. As a reminder, the reason we weren’t working was because of the poor yields for the dry land. The farmer we cut for has his own machine and decided after getting started before we got here that it just wasn’t going to pay to hire us to cut it. So, he did it himself. Thus cutting the amount of acres we were hoping for and creating a lot of dead time for us while waiting for the irrigated to ripen. Our farmer uses a stripper header which means it only ingests the head of the wheat. So, when a combine goes through the field with a stripper header, the majority of the straw remains as “field matter”. Our MacDon draper header actually cuts the straw and is ingested by the combine and spread over the field fromthe back. We’re cutting the irrigated wheat because of the amount of straw that was grown.  Our farmer is a “no till” farmer and doesn’t want quite that much field matter left so we got the job of cutting the better wheat.

This explains what the countryside looks like. The darker wheat is much shorter and has almost no heads on it. The taller, lighter colored wheat has been irrigated. It’s amazing what water will do!

It really felt good to be back to work! I found it interesting how long it seemed those two weeks took to pass. I told the girls if we had been on a two week vacation, they would have zoomed by. Since we literally didn’t do anything, those two weeks seemed like two months. I bet the girls were even glad when we walked out the door headed to the field.

Making our typical sandwich lunch.

The wheat is yielding very well – 70/80 bushels per acre. I even saw 100+ a couple of times. The test weights have been 59 – 63. And, thank goodness, most of it is standing. The only issue we’ve had so far is green straw in places. Tomorrow (Wednesday) could be a stresser. We’re down to our last 100 acres and it will probably be hard to find enough dry wheat to keep the combine going. If we are able to move through it, we’ll be done with the work we had lined up – 2 ½ days.

Little blurry, but it shows the yield being 109 bu/ac in that particular area of the field.

This is the “Big Lowe” elevator – part of the Garden City Elevator facilities. It’s a BEAUTIFUL facility! It’s so clean. You can definitely tell the employees take particular care of everything around there. They are friendly and willing to help in any way they can – even offered me popcorn. Perfect!

This morning began with a two mile walk. Jim had moved the combine to the next field and was cutting. So, when I got there with Frank, I parked it and walked the mile back to the Pete and took it to the field. Then walked back to the pickup and parked it in the new field too. While I was walking, I decided I would take a few pictures of what I saw.

This corn must have been planted later than some of the others that I’ve seen.

This was looking west – I was headed east to get the Pete.

Seeing more and more of these being put up all over this part of the country.

This little devil startled me when I realized what it was and it was in my path – or was I in his path?

Most who read this will probably understand what pivots and irrigation are all about. However, for those of you who don’t, I will attempt to explain how it works. A center pivot acts like your yard sprinkler only on a much more gigantic scale. The center remains stationery and the “arm” runs in a circular motion, watering the fields while moving. The water is pumped from water resources underground (in this case the Ogallala Aquafir) to the stationery center and then sprays through the dangling nozzles between the rows of growing plants. (I attempted)

The corn you saw earlier is growing in this field.

The corners of this pivot haven’t been planted yet – or – if they have, nothing has started growing.

This gives a good example of the pivot being planted to corn and the corners were wheat.

This is an engine running the water pump for the pivot sprinkler. When these are running – they are REALLY loud.

The field we worked on all day was a 130 acre circle. We were able to get it finished before calling it a day. It’s 1:30 a.m. and the wind is STILL blowing 30 mph.