Feeding America, Days 15-18 of Harvest 2011

Well my friends, the nut behind the computer key board (me) was having difficulty getting some videos loaded to tell you that we have been rained out, greened out and been having mechanical issues with Farmer Joe’s combine.  So I have lots to share with you, so come along and I’ll tell you all about it….  (many of these videos were taken over several days)

Some of the wheat around our house was too green to harvest, so we moved to another field about 5 miles down the road. Farmer Joe was not getting to harvest until late afternoon  on a couple of those days due to mechanical breakdowns on his header (yes again), but we did manage to get that field harvested and moved back to our home place.  Here is a video of the semi trucks moving back into the field by our farm house.

While harvesting, one of the chains was slipping so Farmer Joe moved the combine to level ground to do some minor adjustments as pictured below

Farmer Joe working on his combine

Wheat that was bunched up in the header due to the chain slipping

A view of what the inner workings of a combine look like. 
The side panel was up, so I snapped this picture.

Here is a video of my grand angels after their ride in the combine with Papa.  So far they have been logging in many rides as they can.  

A storm came through and brought lots of lightening, thunder and some rain.  Here you can see the dark clouds starting to roll in the picture below.

Son in law, Soren holding Natalie watching the combine.

Kaitlyn, our daughter, along with Andrew (her boyfriend)were visiting for the week-end and helped shuffle equipment from one field to another. Even though Andrew grew up on a cattle feeding operation, she wanted to show him that she thought she could drive a tractor better than he could.... =)

Andrew and Kaitlyn pausing in between moving equipment



Daughter Jen and son in law Soren, along with Maggie and Natalie
while waiting for rides in the combine



A view of the combine harvesting down a hill

Another view of the combine harvesting on our rolling
hills here in North Idaho

Earlier in the week, Ty, the brother of Cody (our hired man) came out to show his city born girlfriend what a farm looked like and to ride in a combine.  While she liked seeing what we do, she was not ready to give up life in Seattle.

Welina and Farmer Joe

With harvest in full swing, here is what is happening all around us.

A view of the service truck working on Farmer Joe's combine.  The service trucks come out to the field to service the combines.

Farmer Joe was down helping Farmer Jay with the Spring wheat at the Tammany Farm and after he got home, we headed into Moscow and came upon more combines moving from field to field on highway 95.

Not unusal to see combines traveling down the highway
to get to their fields

Baby Maggie our newest "farmerette" was baptized last Sunday.  Normally this kind of thing goes under the At Home on the Farm page.... but I've been neglecting my other blog pages.



Daddy Soren, Mommy Jen and baby Maggie with our Pastor

Lastly even in the middle of harvest,  I've been getting ready for our 3rd annual Dinner on the Farm series..... which is only a week away now.  

Whew!  There you have it, it has been very hectic.  Farmer Jay only has a couple more days to go before he finishes the Spring wheat down at the Tammany farm, then he will start harvesting garbanzos.  Farmer Joe will finish the winter wheat on our home place, then hopefully start on Spring wheat.  So thanks for stopping by.  Email me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com if you have comments/questions or post a one on the blog.  All my best, Gayle

Feeding America, Day 10 of Harvest 2011

The agenda for this Sunday morning  was to be a day of just moving equipment and getting ready to harvest winter wheat at the Genesee farm.   And so the early Sunday morning found Farmer Joe and I having breakfast with Farmer Jay, Lisa, their son, Zack, and Lisa's brother, Jeff and his girlfriend, Mindy.   After breakfast our guys headed down to Tammany to bring Joe's combine up and I rode home with Lisa.  This has become sort of an informal ritual during harvest when we finish winter wheat down at one farm and move up to the main farm. 

The combine and header are transported separately and the interesting thing about this header is that it can be towed without a special trailer.  The wheels move into transport mode, a detactable long hitch hooks up the header to the pick-up.  Once the destination is reached, then the hitch is removed and the tires are put back into position under the header and it is ready to go.


Arriving at our Genesee field next to our house to
hook the header back up to the combine



Farmers Jay (in the forefront) and Joe in back adjusting
the wheels under the header

All set up and ready to go!  Just hope the wheat is ready to be harvested

Thanks for stopping by ! Have to get some cookies baked for the crew as well as be on hand to run a moisture sample of the wheat into the grain elevators to see if we can harvest today (Monday), plus the song writer will be out later on this afternoon to film wheat harvest (hopefully) for his music video.  Stay tuned I'll have more.  All my best, Gayle.

Feeding America, Day 3 of Harvest 2011

What can we say?  We like "red machines" on the Anderson Farm

Day 3 of winter wheat harvest ended with us finishing our first field down at the Tammany farm.  The weight tickets have not been added up yet for us to know what this field yielded, but it was enough to keep 3 semi trucks busy all day.  Having enough semi-trucks is important as time is money and it is not efficient or wise to keep a combine lingering in the field waiting to be able to unload the grain.   Typically we will have either Farmer Joe or Jay in his combine, then the other farmer will drive one of the other semi trucks, while Cody, our hired man, will drive the other combine.  We also will have Kirk, the hired truck driver with his semi truck out in the field as well.  The two combines keep Ryan, who drives the grain-cart busy as the combines will unload grain (as shown in yesterday’s video) into the cart, and then Ryan will dump his loaded grain cart into one of the semi trucks. 

This is one of several fields that we farm and it is 37 miles from our main farm.  The climate is warmer and milder by about 10 degrees and thus this area is usually the first to be harvested.  As the other Tammany wheat fields are not ready, we had to move the equipment up to another field closer to Genesee.  Moving from field to field is like a mini parade of farm equipment (minus the crowds, confetti & candy), 2 combines, 1 tractor pulling a grain cart, 2 or 3 semi trucks plus our pick-ups.  The normal driving time from one farm to another is about 1 hour, but when moving equipment at speeds of 15-20 mph, you can easily add another 1 ½ hours to that time.  To get to the next  field, we will go up a steep gravel canyon road and one of the pick-ups will flag for us to alert other vehicles on the road  that we are en route as often times there is no place to pull over and the equipment takes up the entire gravel road.  (Next time the farmer promises to have a video clip of this mini parade).

The video clip above shows Ryan blowing off the combine before we move out of the field, and as Farmer Joe narrates - 2 things are important: 1) keeping the wheat chaff cleaned off prevents it catching on fire and 2) sanitation purposes so we don't infect other fields with any foreign or unwelcome weed seed. Some of the weeds that are common to the Tammany area are not up in our area and therefore, we do not want to be a "carrier" and contaminate our other fields.

Ryan blowing off the equipment.  Proper eye, ear & breathing protection
are mandatory safety requirements on our farm

As this area is in a lower elevation than where we live, reptiles can sometimes be seen.  Ewwwww, as you can tell, I am not a fan of snakes and glad it wasn't me that discovered this little surprise.

A rattle snake.... that had been run over and was found next to the
combine just before we were heading out to move.

 As always, thanks for stopping by and please email me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com if you have any questions.  I love posted comments too.  Stay tuned for more on our harvest.  All my best, Gayle