MIA

Well, thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law for pointing out that I have had writer’s block recently.   It didn’t help that things on the farm have been a little slow.  Here is a brief update of the recent happenings.

Jeff was able to get our dryland wheat planted.  And of course, I have pictures.  Here is Jeff filling the wheat drills and planting the pivot corner beside our house.

Martin and Jeff were able to combine about 55 acres of beans before we had enough rain to keep us out of the fields for a while.  There is a nice breeze and plenty of sunshine today so we are hoping to make it back to the field by tomorrow afternoon.

I am working on a new post, Why I don’t eat organic.  Be looking for it soon!  I will also be posting pictures of bean harvest and sugar beet harvest in the near future.

Just whistle while you wait!

After spending a good portion of last week canning and freezing various vegetables and apples, guess what I get to do this week?  Can more veggies and apples!  We were blessed with a wetter year than normal and the plants are loving it.  The crops, whether the ones in our large fields or my small garden patch, all benefited from the additional moisture this year.  

Some things never change on a farm.  Like the waiting game.  Hurry up and wait has a whole new meaning on the farm.  You rush to get your crops planted in time so they will have the maximum amount of time to grow.  You hurry up and fight with Mother Nature to get your crop fertilized and treated and worked at exactly the right time.  You hurry up and fix pivots and keep them running so they can have the right amount of water.  But no matter how much you hurry up and try to get everything done at exactly the right time, you still have to wait for the crop to be ready to harvest.  You can’t rush it.  It happens when it is ready.  And right now we continue to wait for the beans to be ready to harvest,  

Jeff is gearing up to plant our wheat while we wait for the beans.  He was hoping to get started later today.  He will have to go pick up wheat seed and probably fertilizer too.  Then he can get started planting our almost 800 acres of dryland wheat. 

Hopefully I will be back later today or first thing tomorrow to share some pictures of Jeff planting wheat.  For now, the canner calls again…

Fall is in the Air

Tags

family farm, farming, harvest

Things around the farm have fallen into a lull while we wait for beans to be ready for harvest and for the time to be right to plant wheat.  The pivots have to be checked daily, but otherwise we are busy with smaller projects.

Recently, my excursion needed to be fixed, so it is in the shop.  Before that, a tractor was in need of a tire repair.  And before that the planter needed some new parts so it was ready to plant wheat.  The guys are never bored, that is for sure.  Today, they are on their way to get a new cab for a semi.  Which will need to be installed after it gets here.  

This is also the time of year that everyone is enjoying the benefits of raising a garden.  We are no exception.  Today, I am busy putting up corn.  Yesterday, I put up beans and salsa. I have also put zucchini in the freezer, canned applesauce, and I have more apples waiting on a friend’s tree.  When we went outside to shuck corn this morning, it was a cool 44 degrees outside.  Perfect fall day.  I love fall.  The season of harvest.  Hard working paying off.  Today, it is paying off in the form of cans and bags of delicious sweet corn.

     

A note about our sweet corn.  We recently switched to a Round-Up Ready sweet corn.  Yes, it is GMO.  Why?!  Well, let me use last year as an example.  Last year we planted sweet corn on the edge of our field corn.  Just like we usually do.  Jeff went out to spray our corn, like he always does.  We spray our corn to kill the weeds.  Weeds take vital water away from our crops.  We are required to kill many varieties of weeds by law.  Weeds also reduce our yields.  So, Jeff went to spray our corn last year and accidentally forgot about our sweet corn.  And it all died.  Martin and Jeff decided it was time to try the Round-Up Ready sweet corn to keep that from happening.  It is delicious, and our sweet corn crop is abundant!  Which is why I am spending the day while the children nap putting corn up for us to enjoy until next year.  And with that, I better get back to canning!  

Until next time! 

Fall is in the Air

Things around the farm have fallen into a lull while we wait for beans to be ready for harvest and for the time to be right to plant wheat.  The pivots have to be checked daily, but otherwise we are busy with smaller projects.

Recently, my excursion needed to be fixed, so it is in the shop.  Before that, a tractor was in need of a tire repair.  And before that the planter needed some new parts so it was ready to plant wheat.  The guys are never bored, that is for sure.  Today, they are on their way to get a new cab for a semi.  Which will need to be installed after it gets here.  

This is also the time of year that everyone is enjoying the benefits of raising a garden.  We are no exception.  Today, I am busy putting up corn.  Yesterday, I put up beans and salsa. I have also put zucchini in the freezer, canned applesauce, and I have more apples waiting on a friend’s tree.  When we went outside to shuck corn this morning, it was a cool 44 degrees outside.  Perfect fall day.  I love fall.  The season of harvest.  Hard working paying off.  Today, it is paying off in the form of cans and bags of delicious sweet corn.      

A note about our sweet corn.  We recently switched to a Round-Up Ready sweet corn.  Yes, it is GMO.  Why?!  Well, let me use last year as an example.  Last year we planted sweet corn on the edge of our field corn.  Just like we usually do.  Jeff went out to spray our corn, like he always does.  We spray our corn to kill the weeds.  Weeds take vital water away from our crops.  We are required to kill many varieties of weeds by law.  Weeds also reduce our yields.  So, Jeff went to spray our corn last year and accidentally forgot about our sweet corn.  And it all died.  Martin and Jeff decided it was time to try the Round-Up Ready sweet corn to keep that from happening.  It is delicious, and our sweet corn crop is abundant!  Which is why I am spending the day while the children nap putting corn up for us to enjoy until next year.  And with that, I better get back to canning!  

Until next time! 

Back to the Grind

Where have I been?  My last post was all about wheat harvest, and it was coming to a close.  Now, here it is two weeks later.  Oops.  So, where were we?

Wheat harvest finally wrapped up without much excitement.  All of our wheat now sits at the grain elevator.  Almost all of it will be shipped overseas.  Now, we play the waiting game.  We watch the markets and decide when to sell our wheat.  The commodities market goes up and down, just like the stock market.  We don’t really understand what makes it go up and down.  We just try to wait for a price that seems fair.  We are still waiting.  

The day after we finished wheat harvest, our county fair started.  Jeff is on the fair board, so we are pretty much at fair whenever there is something going on.  We usually take a one day break from fair and take our motorcycle up to Sturgis.    

After fair was over, Jeff went back to work spraying our stubble fields.  He will start planting next year’s wheat crop into the stubble in about a month.  Before he can plant, he needs to make sure all the weeds are dead.  We are also required by law to kill certain weeds.  I found this in this week’s paper:

After he is done spraying, he will start getting the planter ready to go.  Until then, we keep watering our crops. Martin and Jeff have had to work on our pivots quite a bit this year.  As I write this, they are out working on a pivot.  

Pivots have several working parts, and most pivots are a quarter of a mile long.  Each section of the pivot has a motor which turns two tires.  Most of our pivots have 7-8 sections.  There are also sensors that tell the motor when to make the tires turn.  Tires can go flat or get stuck, motors burn out and have to be replaced, and the sensors can stop working.  These cause the pivot to shut down completely.  Since we live in a dry area, we rely on the pivots to water our crops.  Keeping them running is crucial to our operation.

Today officially marked the end of summer vacation for Brenna.  She started first grade today.  She was excited to go back to school and see her friends.  She has also heard that her teacher does a recycling project and she can’t wait to hear about it too.  

Well, that sums up the past two weeks.  They have been busy, but fun.  Come back soon for updated pictures of our crops! 

Promised Pictures

Tags

family farm, farming, harvest, wheat

As promised yesterday, here are my pictures of harvest thus far.  It looks like we won’t get finished today.  It was way too damp last night and we had to wait longer than we expected for the dew to dry.  When the wheat is too damp, the combines can’t combine it.  The damp straw clogs up the augers on the headers.  Anyways, pictures!

Working into the evenings means you get to enjoy some beautiful sunsets!  These were taken one evening when we stopped for supper.

Lunch Break!  They don’t even get to come into the house to eat.  I take meals out in my Excursion, and I try to time it so we can all eat together.  During harvest, most of our “family time” is spent in one vehicle or another.

 

Here, we are unloading our semi onto what is called the ground pile.  A ground pile is exactly what it sounds like: a pile on the ground.   Since the elevator will take in much more grain than they have storage for, they use the ground pile for much of their excess.   It has special ventilation so the grain doesn’t rot or hold too much moisture.

Another view of our semi unloading onto the ground pile.  The second picture is of the elevator’s grain bins and their second ground pile.

All the fuss is over these tiny grains of wheat!

Well, that’s probably enough pictures for now.  Stay tuned for more harvest updates!

 

 

 

 

And Combines Keep Rolling…

We are 8 days into harvest now.  With some luck, we will be finished tomorrow.   Each semi load of wheat that we take into the elevator holds enough wheat to make approximately 69,350 loaves of bread.  Just today Jeff hauled in 6 semis, enough wheat to make 347,000 loaves of bread!  Now THAT is feeding the world!

Each morning Jeff has gotten up to take in the trucks that were filled the night before, after the elevator had closed.  Martin has been checking on our other crops.  They still need watered and the pivots and wells need checked.

When we check the pivot, we are checking several things.  First, we want to make sure that it has moved.  Then, we make sure that it is still watering correctly.  The end gun has to be checked to make sure that it is off if it is near the road.  Lastly, we have to make sure the dripper is still dripping oil to lubricate the bearings in the well.

After the pivots and wells are checked, it is time to get the combines ready to go to the field.  They need fueled, greased, and checked over.  Any bearings that are found to be worn out are replaced.  Belts are checked for proper tension.  Oil  and antifreeze levels are also checked.  Then they are ready to go to the field.

Once the morning dew has dried, the combines can finally go to the field.  The combines can fill a semi faster than Jeff can make it to town and back.  So, needless to say, he stays very busy.  Lunch and supper are eaten in the field.  The day is long.  I have taken plenty of pictures to share, and I will try to post them tomorrow.  For now, we are all exhausted.

A Brief History Lesson

So before I get into more juicy details about the day to day activities on our farm, I thought maybe I should give you some background and information about Schumacher Farms.

Jeff’s great-grandfather started the family in the agriculture industry.  The farm was passed down from him to Jeff’s grandfather, Keith.  Keith has retired but still lives on the farm.  Keith passed the farm on to Martin, Jeff’s dad.  Martin is still hard at work on the farm and Jeff works with him.

Each generation has expanded the ground we farm.  We currently farm about 2,800 acres.  Approximately 1,600 acres of that ground is dryland.  We raise winter wheat on half of that ground.  The other half remains fallow, or unfarmed.  We rotate the dryland so that the fields grow a crop every other year.  This allows the ground to replenish nutrients and retain moisture.  The rest of our ground is irrigated.  We have 9 pivots that water our crops.  Our irrigated crops are corn, dry edible beans, and wheat.

Martin and Jeff do most of the farm work.  My mother-in-law, Trish, and I help out when we are needed.  Family farming means that everyone does their part.   Even our daughter, Brenna, has gotten to help a time or two.  The best part about it is that we get to spend lots of time together.

Hopefully that is enough for you to be able to follow my posts a little better.  As always, if you have any questions feel free to ask!  Now, on to write about our exciting week!

Time Flies when You’re Having Fun!

The past week has flown by!  Beans were sprayed, combines were worked on, and there was just enough time to squeeze in some fun with friends and family.

Jeff sprays our fields.  Last week he sprayed the beans.  The beans get cultivated one time while they are small.  A cultivator is an implement (piece of equipment that gets pulled by the tractor) that uses little shovels to kill the weeds between the rows of beans.  When the beans get bigger, we spray them to kill the weeds.

   

While Jeff was busy spraying, Martin was busy working the edges of some of our fields.  He was using a small disk (an implement) to chop up the dirt which kills the weeds. Here, he is disking the field beside my driveway.

 

We aren’t all work and no play.  We were able to spend time with friends over the weekend as well.  A friend of mine came to visit with her kids, and we took the group swimming.

 

Sunday is almost always family day.  After church we try to find something we can all go do.  This week Jeff and I took the girls to the Scottsbluff Zoo.  They just opened a new petting zoo and it was the first time we had been there since it opened.  The girls enjoyed petting and feeding the goats and donkeys.  There is also a splash pad at the zoo, so of course we had to cool off in the water before we left.

   

The most exciting was this morning when we started combining wheat!  Harvest is one of my favorite times of the year.  All our hard work comes to fruition.  Martin and Trish drive the combines.  Jeff drives the semi trucks to town to the elevator.  I cook the meals and take them to the field.  Brenna likes to ride with Jeff in the trucks to town because the elevator usually gives her a treat.

 

Well, that sums up the past week.  It is going to be very busy for a while until all the wheat is harvested.  I will keep you updated! 

Getting Ready for Wheat Harvest

We are gearing up for wheat harvest on the Schumacher farm.  The combines are making their visit to the shop for inspections and repairs.  The wheat has turned from beautiful green to various shades of gold and amber.  Trucks are being readied to take the harvested grain to town.

Wheat harvest has been almost a year in the making.  The wheat was planted last fall.  Our irrigated wheat and dryland wheat are different varieties that have been proven to produce the best in our given climate and farming practices.  Our wheat is not GMO, however it is selective trait.  Selective trait means that a field of wheat was grown and then treated with a specific chemical.  The wheat that tolerated the chemical went on to produce seed, and that seed is what we grow our crops from.  If we need to treat the field, we can use the chemical that the wheat tolerated, or has the selective trait for.

Some of you may be wondering why we treat, or spray, our wheat.  The main reason is for weed control.   Less weeds means there are less plants fighting for water and fertilizers.  This means that the wheat yields are higher.  The demand on farmers to produce more food is getting greater each day.  That wouldn’t be such a big deal if we had more and more land to grow food.  The reality is that the ground available for farming is slowly disappearing.  We must use every viable option to produce more food with less ground.

Now that the equipment is ready, all there is to do is wait.  The wheat has to dry in the field.  We choose to wait until the wheat is dry enough to harvest.  Some farmers will harvest their wheat when it is still moist and that requires them to use a drying bin or be charged fees at the elevator.  The elevator is a receiving and storage location for crops.  We have two elevators we will work with during our various harvests.  One elevator deals in main crops like our corn and wheat.  The other elevator specializes in edible beans which is a relatively small, specialized market.

Until the wheat is dry enough to harvest, we will be busy taking care of our other crops.  The corn and beans have to be irrigated.   The beans need sprayed for weeds.  We will be keeping an eye on the weather.  Right now hail is our biggest weather concern.  Hail is extremely damaging to crops.  Last year, we lost every crop on our farm to hail.  There is nothing we can do to prevent crop damage from hail.  We pray for rain and pray that hail does not come with it.