harvest time in montana…in a BIG way (video)

The above picture shows you the reason I can begin to fill you in on how the past ten days have gone. It will be two weeks ago on Wednesday night that we came rolling into Denton. It seems like at least two months ago. Those semis you see in the picture are lined up waiting to haul the grain away from the elevator. They’re pretty much always here with those of us waiting to dump. It’s somewhat a vicious circle. The crop is amazingly large this year! We’ve been cutting 75+ bushel wheat since we started. Jim says there’s one four-letter word for it…SLOW. We have been lucky to get about 60 acres cut per day – per machine (we’re cutting with the farmer).

There have only been a couple of times that I’ve been able to get into the combine to watch the wheat roll in the header. I’ve seen 100+ show up on the yield monitor. What a way to finish out the season! I’m FINALLY not having to watch the header bounce along the ground.

Some of the wheat had “lodged” – in other words, it went down and is laying on the ground. This makes it really hard to cut because the straw is usually still green and there’s a lot of it. The combine has to creep along in order for it to ingest all that material without plugging up somewhere.

We haven’t had any full days of cutting simply because the moisture has been on the high end. The nights are very cool and the mornings have been a little on the wet side. Great weather for humans but not so much for wheat that needs to be cut. Seems like we’ve had to do a lot of searching for the next field that may be able to just cut. For the past three days, though, we’ve had summer time heat back in Central Montana. This has helped with the fields being drier and being able to just keep cutting without searching.

Yesterday (Saturday) was our first really full day of cutting since we got here – and we finished with the winter wheat. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many loads I hauled away yesterday. I was BEAT last night!! And even worse than that…my tan all washed away with the shower water.

Today we are beginning to cut spring wheat.

Can you see the difference between these two pictures? The picture above is that of winter wheat. The spring wheat we’re cutting is darker. It looks like it’s going to yield really good, too.

My job here is truck driver. I’ve certainly spent most of my time on the roads. The grain bins are filling fast! Coming to the elevator is a luxury simply because I get a couple of minutes to catch my breath (if there’s any sort of truck line). And with the spring wheat yielding really good, too, I probably won’t have much time to write. So…I better leave you with a few pictures from the week and get ready to fire Frank up once again! I know one thing, too, it’s been three weeks ago we had a full day off. That was the day the girls and I went to the mountains. I’m sort of wishing for a couple of days of rain to get rested and caught back up on a few things! Is that bad?