5. Woo-hoo, we're rolling! Sort of...

After a couple of tries between rains, we finally were able to officially start the 2007 harvest season on May 28. Al was given the honor of doing the first couple of rounds, firstly because he is the boss, and secondly to take his mind off purchasing a rope to throw over the auger to hang himself. All the sitting around waiting for the rains to stop, then more waiting until the moisture of the grain was low enough for the elevator, tends to give a person a lot of thinking time.

The ground along and near the Red River, where we combine, is very sandy, so any moisture that had fallen, soaked up and left the fields reasonably solid for cutting. So far, no one is buying the beer for the summer, which used to be the deal when we had hired employees. The first one to get stuck had to buy beer, for the crew, for the summer. Since Al doesn't drink, and Marilyn doesn't drink alone (or much at all...except for theatre cast parties), it's not much incentive to stay out of the mud. Of course, with the rain this year that might not matter at all.

We got rolling and it was like old times. All the time spent preparing for the harvest season, all the weather, the travelling with it's pitfalls, the repairs, and most of all the waiting, all melt away once you are in the combine seat, looking at a field of ripe golden wheat. It looks like it will take forever with only one machine, but as you go around in circles, or back and forth, the field gets smaller and smaller until it is finally finished. Once you look back at what was accomplished over a matter of hours, it doesn't seem as big as when you started.

The days start out cloudy, but then clear off later in the day which means a lot of ground doesn't get covered when you don't start til 4 or 5 pm. Things seemed to be rolling along fairly well until Marilyn called about smelling smoke, when going with the wind. After stopping, it was plain to see the smoke coming out of the back of the combine, but a search of the innards came up short. We found the embers glowing in the rotor gear case up in the engine compartment, and with the fire extinguisher handy, we put it out. We still can't figure out what started it in the first place.

The low clouds and high humidity kept us from getting on a roll, but we did manage to squeeze in another laundry day. There was a bit of a wait, as a lot of the other crews around were doing the same thing. You always get some interesting conversation from other workers, especially regarding their experiences so far.

We finished off May by getting another 25 acres done before the storms started up again. Fortunately we didn't get anything nasty, and no hail or tornadoes (so far...).

4. The wait...

As the days passed, more and more trucks loaded with all manner of harvesting equipment could be seen moving south along the highway through Davidson. The local campgrounds filled with campers originating anywhere from Texas to Canada. After killing time through a few days of drizzle, we finally got a couple of warm days which gave us hope that we would soon be able to do a test. Just when we thought we would be able to give it a go, the tests from a couple of different fields were 16% and 19% moisture. The elevator said 13.5% was as high as they would go, so it was more "hurry up and wait".

Every year for the past 15, Case IH has been having a Harvest Kickoff breakfast and safety meeting in Frederick, about 12 miles to the north of Davidson. This year, as with most, they ran it for two days, and we attended the second day. Our theory was that everyone tends to go on the first day, so if we go on the second day, less people means better odds on winning one of the door prizes. Now, normally this has worked in the past, but because of the rain, a lot of guys came both days(free biscuits and gravy...). Al won a hat, and Marilyn got shut out.

With weather forecasts stating four days of rain, some harvesters did manage to get started later on in the day and the local elevator took in 15,000 bushels before the rains started. It rained most of the day, bringing 1" of rain, and it remained cloudy and humid through the next day, with sprinkles throughout the night. More waiting...fortunately, with the dish, Al is not far from a hockey game at any given time, and Walmart is only 20 miles away. Hey, it's excercise...who wants to walk in the rain?

The crop is trying to turn, and now it seems all the rain is going to make the fields a bit of a challenge to navigate. Al says he doesn't care what happens, he is leaving here July 1 whether we are done or not!

3. The preparation...

Once we were all settled in at the campground...satellite dish aimed, phone hooked up, internet set up (dial-up...yeesh, talk about roughing it), it was time to get the fleet field-ready. Although the combine had been left spotless after the Canadian fall harvest, Al found it necessary to take it back to North Dakota for sunflower harvest, and not bother cleaning up after himself. Fortunately, we ran into some rain during the move which did soften up the crud, and it only took two hours of pressure washing to get it back into shape. A day was spent cleaning cabs, windows and truck boxes, then making sure all grease points were sufficiently lubed, it was then a waiting game. The crops in the area were still a bit on the green side, since the weather had been unseasonably cool through April.

2. The trek south...

This year's harvesting season began as we officially left our home in Yorkton on May 12.

We only went as far as Carlyle, SK, to spend a day or so with Marilyn's sister, Marg, and her family, husband Kim and son Gordie. This is the usual "bed and breakfast" that we stay at on the way down, and on the way back home. It's close enough to the border (45 minutes), which allows the chance to get a couple more winks in, rather than getting up before the crack of dawn, and driving for three hours. We are not morning people. Besides, it gives us a chance to get in a visit before leaving the country for four months.

We made Northgate, ND at around 10 am on Monday, May 14, and since we had our paperwork in order (we had taken the grain cart, tractor and header down earlier in April), things went quite smoothly. They did have something new at the US port this trip. We had to drive through an archway made by a crane mounted on a truck, which either x-rayed us, or took pictures of our rigs. We never asked, and once we were through, they waved us on...no contraband on board.

We had a great trip down, the wind pushed us all the way, which was the first time in 14 years. Monday had us making it to Gettysburg, South Dakota by 6pm, covering 375 miles for the day. We had to unload the combine and take the pickup head off to store it at our farmers, since we wouldn't need it until we returned in July. This is the first stop where some of the spring crops get swathed to encourage uniform ripening of the crop and drying down of any weeds. The winter wheat in this area looked good, but was a long way from being in heads. The spring wheat was all up and growing, and the farmers were winding down the corn planting.

Tuesday we had another day of tail wind, but we also had a detour to contend with. At Ft. Thompson, SD, they were fixing the bridge over the Big Bend Dam which crosses the Missouri River, the width restriction was 13 ft. The combine on the trailer was 13'8", so that meant we had to find a detour. For a state that has such concern about overweight vehicles ruining their highway, you think they would have signs letting traffic know the best way to get around the construction...or even that there was a width restriction. If we hadn't gone online to check on construction, we never would have known until we reached the dam, and that would have meant backing up a looonnng way with a big load. The detour we found took us through Chamberlain, SD, and with a short stop to repair one of the straps that held our shop trailer in the back of the grain truck, we had only lost two hours of extra driving time. The drive through Nebraska was as uneventful as it always is, and even with the detour, we made Phillipsburg, Kansas by 7pm after logging 427 miles for the day.

Wednesday we left Phillipsburg, and had another uneventful day of driving through Kansas and Oklahoma. Everything looked so much greener than it had last year, the crops seemed to be a bit behind the normal, but really looked tall and lush, and as long as Mother Nature cooperates, it will be a bumper crop. We made it to our destination of Davidson, OK by 7:30pm covering 423 miles, for a total of 1355 miles from home. We hit the "easy button" when we retired for the night.

1. We've made the move...

Well, here goes the foray into new territory. We hope this will help to keep everyone updated on our harvest season, and keep us on our toes with our "weakly" reports. Yes, it was spelled correctly.

For those who don't know us, we are Al & Marilyn Kuntz, from Yorkton, Saskatchewan. We have been custom harvesting in Canada and the USA on our own for the past 14 years, and were hired on with a couple of other crews for five years prior to that. We had two combines and support equipment, for the first eight years, which meant hiring employees. Anyone who has their own business, or has to hire to fill positions, will understand the difficulty in finding quality workers, especially ones that are willing to leave their home/family/girlfriend for an extended period of time. We went down to one machine in 2001 and although we are inseparable for five months solid...we're still together.

Most years, if the crops are decent, we start in Davidson, Oklahoma, three miles north of the Red River which is the border between Texas and Oklahoma. We continue our way north, following the ripening crop all the way into Canada, and then return to North Dakota for the fall harvest of soybeans and sunflowers. Most years our season ends mid to late October, but we have returned as late as November 27.

We have always sent out an email to let everyone know how things are progressing along the way. These emails, were meant to be weekly, but they usually end up monthly, or even more widely spaced. This means that when they do arrive in the inbox, they are really quite long and windy, and cover quite a bit of ground. With this blog, we hope to have an daily entry (even if it is uneventful) and hopefully if you register, we can find out what you think about it and perhaps what is happening in your part of the world.