Son's 2014 Wheat Harvest Video
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HA/KS's Link
This gives a great picture of a family wheat harvest operation. You may enjoy it whether or not you have ever been part of a wheat harvest. In middle America farm country, it is just known as "harvest" and everyone knows what you mean.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Here's my Grandfathers threshing company. Early 1900s
Here's one of them harvesting in 1910. No A/C then. There's a note on the picture that he just bought 40 more acres for $1.26 an acre
HA/KS,
Been there, done that. No air conditioned cab back then and I hated unloading on the run.
Awesome, thanks for posting that video.
Ha
What a cool video. Loved it.
Seeing people that you just know are full of love for their family country and god is such a positive thing
Brings back the days of harvest near Enid OK
Families all working together.
What a truly great country we all live in
Beautiful. Harvesters are amazing pieces of machinery. How reliable are they? Are there things that have a habit of breaking? Are those your sons and the land they're harvesting? I grew up in orchard country where walnuts and almonds were are hand knocked in the 50s to hydraulic shakers. There are people that specialize in just harvesting for farmers. I would think that's what goes on with wheat harvesting. Those things got to be super spendy.
DL, we call the harvest machine a combine. In the early days it was a multiple step process. All of those steps are now combined into one machine - thus the combine.
The machine gathers the heads, threshes the grain from them, separates the grain from the straw and chaff, and stores it in a bin until it is unloaded into a truck or grain cart.
The combines in the photo are over 10 years old. There are a lot of parts to a combine, so a lot can go wrong. One of the measures of a successful harvest is the numbers of breakdowns, or time lost and expense of repairs. Even a "minor" breakdown can be thousands of dollars. A new machine similar to the ones you see would be about $540,000.
The farm belongs to my son's in-laws. The kids in the video are probably the 5th generation on that farm.
Some farm magazine already interviewed him about using drones in Ag since this video came out.
that's an awesome video, thanks for sharing. I know nothing about farming and even less about wheat, but why are they bailing the debris left over? is that bedding for something or will some critter actually eat it?
thanks again,
michael
No such thing as a Minor break down on one of those monsters. Not like the old days of a hammer and bailing wire fix. Can't even find bailing wire.
mn, the "straw" has multiple uses. During the recent drought, it was selling for nearly $100/ton in places.
Cattle require "roughage" in their diet due to how their digestive system works. Some feedlots grind up straw to mix with the grain they feed to cattle that are being fattened for slaughter.
Yes, cattle will eat it, but it is not highly nutritious.
Just got to watch it HA/KS That is really cool. Iv drove a combined in corn and beans but not wheat. Thanks
Wheat, barley, flax, rye and soy beans. I really hated harvesting the barley.
BIGHORN, even the thought of beer not enough to keep the itch off?
HA/KS,
You got that right. The most boring time was plowing alfalfa ground with a HD-9 caterpillar in low gear. The tracks go plink, plink, plink.
I remember one time dad set me loose on a half section with a John Deere and a 4 bottom roll-over plow. Each round was 2 miles and seemed to take forever (actually only 40 minutes).