Harvest Time

This is the week we wait for all year. The payoff for all the hard work. Harvest. Harvest started late this year due to more moisture and cooler weather than normal. Today Todd rolled in with the combines and bank out wagon and started cutting. Their day started off with a little excitement. The boy driving the water truck got off the road on to a soft shoulder and rolled the truck. Thankfully no one was hurt.

The wheat being grown on our land is planted in the fall and is called hard red winter wheat. It is especially high in protein and is best used for breads. Most farmers in our area plant winter wheat.

The combines being used are Internationals and they cut the wheat and then dump it into the trailer being pulled by the tractor called the bank out wagon. Bank out wagons speed up the process of cutting because it can go anywhere the combines go. This eliminates the need for the combines to ever stop cutting to dump their load. Most of the land is very hilly and trucks can't drive on a lot of it. Our land, however, is almost entirely flat. Once the bank out wagon is full it dumps it into the waiting semi and trailers. The semi will haul it directly to the river, either the Snake or the Columbia where it will wait its turn to be loaded on a barge destine for Portland.

But do you want to know who is the most pleased when the combines fire up their diesel motors? The hawks who reside on the farm. They fly high over the combines waiting for them to uncover mice and gophers and then they swoop down and pick them up. Sometimes they will even grab a snake. Did you know hawks see well enough that if they could read they could read standard type print from 1 mile away. Amazing.