Friday, August 19, 2011

Feeding America, Day 8 of Harvest 2011

Coming home tonight I got behind a combine on highway 95, so now I know harvest has officially started on the Palouse, here in North Idaho.  


On Thursday we harvested about 200 acres of winter wheat and have a little over 100+ acres left.   Again we will not know what this field is yielding until all the weight tickets are totaled.  Once this field is done, Farmer Jay will stay in Tammany with his “level-land combine” as the ground is flat and Farmer Joe will move his “self-leveling combine” up to the Genesee farm as our ground has the “rolling hills of the Palouse".  Farmer Jay, Cody (our hired man), Ryan (our summer high school help) will be Jay’s crew down at Tammany.  Farmer Joe will start on the winter wheat fields at the Genesee farm and we will have to hire 2 temporary people to help drive the other semi trucks and the other grain cart.  Luckily we have a recently retired friend, Hale, who is willing to drive the grain cart and hopefully our hired man’s dad, Roger, can take some vacation time from his job and drive the semi trucks.   
The colors of the crops this time of year are so varied, as you can see below.  This year we planted a new variety of hard red spring wheat that has a very distinct color.

Our green garbanzo field is along side our reddish color wheat and the neighbors
golden wheat field

Here are two wheat fields along side each other, the reddish color
is our hard red spring wheat along side the normal golden color

Once again, thanks for stopping by and email me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com if you have questions.  All my best, Gayle