This year is International Year of the Woman Farmer and Oregon Department of Agriculture is featuring female farmers from across Oregon all year.
This week I was surprised to be the first featured farmer. Honestly I was surprised just to be nominated and to see I made the list of those who they are highlighting was even more exciting! I am looking forward to see more names on the list throughout the year.
Oregon has a strong tradition of female farmers and I am proud to call many my friends. You can follow along as the department adds more names to the list this year by following Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Facebook page. A big thanks to ODA and to who nominated me. I truly appreciate it!
We bought a new combine at the end of harvest last year. So we are “retiring” our 9550 John Deere Sidehill combine. We went around and around on if we should just sell it, or do you keep it just in case, what are the costs, what are the risks, what are the holes that we would have, etc. So it felt like we went around and around so many times on this decision it felt that this post was appropriate to share. Enjoy….
If you buy a new combine, then you’ll have to sell the old one.
If you sell the old one, you will also have to sell the wheat header that goes with it.
If you sell the wheat header that goes with it you realize they don’t make tiny 12 foot wheat headers anymore.
And since they don’t make tiny 12 foot wheat headers anymore you’ll have to buy a 25 foot wheat header.
If you buy a 25 foot header you realize it won’t fit down the road like your 12 foot wheat header.
Since it won’t fit down the road like your twelve foot wheat header you’ll have to also buy a trailer.
Since you have to buy the header and the trailer you start to do math and realize it will cost you more than you thought.
Since it will cost you more than you thought you also think about the size again.
While thinking about the size again you realize your windrow coming out of the combine will be twice as big as the 12 footer.
If the windrow is twice as big as a 12 footer, you realize it will be too big for the tiny bale baler for the bales your kids sell each fall.
If it’s too big of a windrow for your tiny bale baler you realize you would have to spread the straw.
If you have to spread the straw, you then realize that you’d have to buy a set of rakes to then make the small windrow again for the tiny bale baler.
If you have to buy a set of rakes added to the cost of the header added to the cost of the trailer…. You think that maybe this could be too much of a pain
And maybe, just maybe you should just keep the old combine.
We have been rolling along over here in St. Paul. We started harvest early this year, we didn’t get much to any rain since early April so that really sped up the maturing of our crops.
We are on a pretty good stride of the middle of harvest right now. Most days are the same, combine, fill trucks with seed, feed the people, try to stay cool, haul the trucks to the cleaner, rinse and repeat.
The beginning of harvest was a little insane I’ll be honest. We started combining crimson clover at the same time that we started cutting our tall fescue which happened to be at the same time as the good old St. Paul rodeo.
So our days started at 2am with cutting grass, moving on to 11am combining, 7:30pm rodeo volunteering or watching and finishing off that long day around 11pm.
With of course the inevitable crying family member because there weren’t enough games played (Auggie), not enough carnival rides ridden (Millie), too much food eaten (Hoot), ready to be home (Matt) or just plain damn tired (me!). Don’t get me wrong though, we do a good job of having a lot of fun too!
Not sure when we slept that first week but I know I am not the only one to be happy to be in the middle stride of harvest!!
We will finish tall fescue this week and then get the combines all cleaned out for perennial ryegrass. A week or so of that will finish our grass seed harvest for this year. Next up green beans, wheat, radish & filberts!
NuttyGrass 