Our Crazy Life: Wheat Harvest 2013

Well, Wheat Harvest 2013 is under wraps and it was a smooth and successful event. It ended around the 30th, but it's taken me a while to get this post up...

Chance's parents' farm plants, nurtures and harvest almost 2000 acres of wheat and it took about 10 days to cut it all. That was with a couple of rain days, but overall it went off without a hitch. My little brother Sam worked on the harvest crew this year, and was a huge help. My father-in-law hasn't stopped bragging about how great of a job he did, and we are so proud of him. Can't wait for him to come back and help next year!

This is my fourth wheat harvest since I've known Chance and it has taken me a few just to figure out how everything works. Once the wheat is ripe (typically mid June), it is cut with a combine - which I'm now realizing, I don't have a picture of in this post....oops. The combine separates the grain from the stalk, and is loaded into a grain cart, which is pulled behind a tractor (what Sam was driving). The grain cart is then emptied into the grain truck (which Chance drives) and the grain is driven to the elevator to be sold.

Wheat must be harvested at a certain moisture content or you are penalized at the elevator when it is sold. Typically, if the weather is hot and windy (which we had a LOT of this harvest), the guys can cut after dark because the dew doesn't fall when it's that windy. Some of these pictures were taken by the boys during night cutting. It makes for long days, and longer nights, but once it's done, it's done!

Stud driving his tractor

Pulling the grain cart

Sam dumping grain from his tractor's grain cart into the semi

Cutting wheat at night

A quick learner!

Chance cutting wheat with the combine

I went down to the farm towards the end of harvest and rode in the tractor with Sam for a couple of hours. These are some of the pictures I snapped with my phone during my ride :)