Category: Sunrise and Sunset Pictures

Wrapping up Grass Seed Harvest

Somedays it feels like we just got started harvesting grass seed this summer. And other days it feels like day 8,537. But irregardless we are wrapping things up on grass harvest of 2024.

It’s gone pretty good. The straw yields are way up. The seed yields are average to up some. It was a strange year with conditions feeling different almost in every field we went into harvest. Lots of setting and resetting of our machines which makes for longer days or at least longer feeling.

We also added two new drivers into the mix as subs when our main two drivers aren’t here. One was our son Hoot, who did an amazing job and took to the job very quickly. Millie also learned to drive the ute, so life looks a lot like getting chauffeured around lately.

Next up is wheat. Which is one of the most fun since it also means the kids get to bale up their small decorative wheat bales for porch decor for this coming fall!! Stay tuned for a chance to get your hands on those cute little things!

Finishing up this crop feels like we finished a marathon that started about a year ago. And one that will start again here shortly as we start to take care of fields for the next years crop, giving some water to start up again, working ground and planting the fields that are rotating, and overall making sure that we set up to reset for another year of farming.

But like I said we still have a little ways to go for this year’s harvest. Wheat, radish and filberts are still left for 2024.

Good Morning

It’s been busy around here lately. Making the change from harvesting crops to getting the ground ready for planting for another year makes this season of farming extremely busy, many times frantic, and sometimes peaceful. 

Here’s what the start to my day looked like. Out moving irrigation in a grass seed field on a fine crispy September morning. It was peaceful; I know it won’t last because even a farmer can stay out and hide in a field all day!  But at least for a few early minutes I enjoyed it!  Happy Friday!!

Harvest Excited, Harvest Tired

I finally sat down and took a deep breath today. We are in the heart of harvest here and there’s a part of me that thrives on all that we accomplish in a day.  And there’s a part of me that’s just exhausted and wishes I could sleep for days.  I am harvest excited and I am harvest tired.

Catching a quick lunch in the shade of our seed truck.

There’s a part of me that sees harvest as dragging on forever then there’s a part of me that laughs at that part because we aren’t even close to being done.  There’s a part of me that gets so excited with good yields and very frustrated with fields that aren’t producing.  Because for us, this is it, this is when it all either happens or doesn’t for our whole year.

final-129A very rough, very awful cabbage field….wondering where the crop is? So were we unfortunately.

Harvest has been long, long days, long nights.  Days filled with paperwork that still has to get finished, bills that still need to be paid.  Logistics of who goes where and what needs to get done, what fields to irrigate, what fields to harvest…a constant triage of priorities.  Then evening comes, the boys in tow, and dinners and family time out in the field.  Which moves us straight into nights of infant cries, and the many needs of a toddler at 3am.  We are smiling, because that crazy spirit in us, that now 4 generations of harvest, heat, dust and dirt…we just can’t shake it.

And the truth is, I already know I’ll be sitting in the same pickup, watching the same beautiful sunset next year, looking forward to the harvest on the horizon.  I am continually excited at the potential, and feeling of a years worth of hard work, just hoping it all pays off.  This farming thing, it isn’t easy, it’s tough on levels that you put your heart and soul into.  It’s something that maybe only a farmer understands and only a farmer would sign up for.  It’s our life though, at times it’s beautiful, at times hard…but either way here we go again for another day!