Harvest 2012

We finished our harvest successfully and we didn't have a single breakdown! If you know much about farming (and especially our family) you know that making it through a harvest without a breakdown is a HUGE accomplishment. Our fields did well and, all things being considered, the wheat was much better than I thought it might be.

I drove the combine for harvest and our high school worker drove the graincart/tractor. My parents weren't quite as entertained by our conversations on the radio as we were ;-)

The hardest part about running combine is all of the stuff I have to do with one hand. This joystick controls the speed, direction (as in forwards or reverse), the header height, the reel height and the auger in/out, along with turning the unloading auger on and off....phew! The header height has to be adjusted while cutting because the wheat is different heights throughout the field and we need to make sure we cut as much wheat as we can.

This is what happens when I try to multi-task a little too much ;-) This is while we were unloading on the go and I was trying to cut the wheat, unload in the moving graincart and also video the whole thing. Maybe wasn't the wisest choice!

I guess we did have one small problem with our header...but have no fear, dad fixed it with the good ol' farmer stand-by. Gorilla tape (it's like duct tape, but dad says it's way stronger).

We had a lot of wind during harvest (I think we had one or two days without it). However, one day it was a huge problem. We were in a field next to another one that had been worked and it was blowing like crazy. We unloaded while stopped, but we were still having issues.

It was interesting trying to cut through the dirt.

Like I said though, all dirt aside, it was a great harvest with lots of productivity and lots of laughter. Praise God!