Rain and harvest arrive together

Recent rains remind me of harvest season in southwest Oklahoma where I grew up.

It seemed we always got a rain about the first week of June no matter what the weather had been before then.

My dad couldn’t wait until the fields dried up enough to support our little pull-behind Massey Harris combine to start (actually try to start) harvesting.

It seemed we spent several days each spring pulling the tractor and combine out of a muddy field – maybe more– looking for a dry one.

That left big ruts in the fields when they did dry up, which made some pretty interesting maneuvers when it came time to plow those same fields later.

I understand my father’s impatience to get the crop harvested. With a family of five kids and a wife to support that wheat crop was an important part of our annual income.

When I got to Kingfisher, I was amazed by my neighbor, the late Roy Bollenbach’s, harvesting method. When the wheat looked from the road like it was ready to go, Roy and family would go to the lake for a week and then come home and breeze right through it.

I didn’t know such a thing was even possible.

Harvesttime Always Exciting

Even though I’ve been away from the farm and harvest for several decades, there is still something exciting about the harvest season.

It is always interesting to me who gets the first wheat to the elevator, plus the yields, the grades and new problems, if any.

One thing has changed since I was a boy. Then it normally took us two weeks at a minimum to get the wheat in the bin – and that reminds me of scoop shovels (no electric augers). Now with wide-header self-propelled combines that operators drive with the expertise of airline pilots, plus the arrival of out-of-state custom cutters, it seems that harvest is often completed in the matter of a week, depending on the weather.

One question, I’ve never understood: Why does hail season arrive at about the same time as harvest?

The operator of our family farm told me he thought he had nearly an 80-bushel-per-acre crop last year until a hail storm hit.

After that, he harvested only a 25-bushels-per-acre crop.

I remember when a 20-bushel yield was a bumper crop. Of course that was before input costs got so high.

Wanted: Weed Spray That Kills Gourds

Speaking of farming matters, I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of a weed spray that will kill gourds. I’ve spent several hours recently digging up gourd vines in my little horse pasture. Despite my efforts, the problem seems to get worse year after year.

As I dig them out I recall that removing gourd plants was one of my most hated chores as a kid.

It seemed it was always my lot to remove them. I had brothers, but they were all older and a lot smarter than I was/am. When that chore arrived, they disappeared.

It was necessary to kill those gourds. In the summertime when the pasture grasses got in short supply our milk cows would sometimes eat gourd plants. That made their milk taste exactly like gourds smell and the milk had to be fed to the pigs rather than going into the products my mother sold to her butter customers – plus milk and cream – in town. Somebody had to get rid of those stinkin’ gourds and it always seemed to be me.

Even though I don’t have a milk cow, I still feel a need to get rid of gourds. (You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy.)

If anyone has a cure for my gourd problem, I’d love to hear it.

Also, “Happy Harvest” to all of our farm families. We couldn’t eat without you.

Thanks.

A Few Historical Events on June 1

1812 – War of 1812: U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom.

1813 – Capture of USS Chesapeake. 1815 – Napoleon promulgates a revised Constitution after it passes a plebiscite 1831 – James Clark Ross becomes the first European at the North Magnetic Pole.

Speaking of James Madison: Did you know he completed degree requirements from college in two years.

He was reported to be sort of a sickly young fellow and reportedly didn’t speak well in public, but he was a great writer and is considered the Father of the Constitution.

He was a confidante of Thomas Jefferson, who considered him the smartest man of that age.

In addition to serving as fourth president of the United States, he wrote 29 of the Federalist papers. His collaborator, Alexander Hamilton asserted he wrote more than that.

Hamilton is credited with writing 51 of the 85 papers, arguing for the ratification of the Constitution.

John Jay is credited with writing the other five. Can anyone really believe that the collection of the Founding Fathers at the same time the United States was being created was a mere accident?