Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Wheat Harvest Time in Kansas!

I took these photos from our pasture; our neighbor farmer
across the dirt road was harvesting his fields. I would have
gotten closer for better photos, but I was being eaten alive
by mosquitoes and such. Bugs love me.


It's wheat harvest time here in southern Kansas, and our neighbor farmers all around us have been busy this past week with their big combines and trailers, harvesting as much as they can in between rain. Our normally uncrowded country road has become just a tad congested, with tractors and trailers and semis and pick-up trucks, everyone intent on getting the wheat harvest done. No more rain in the forecast now - it's very dry and very hot, so they should be able to finish up this week.

In the next few weeks, the night sky will be lit up from the fires, as they burn off the fields in preparation for next year's crops. My experience last year was that it's very cool, yet eerie at the same time... I always wonder, will any of these fires around me get out of control? As y'all know, my hubster had his own brand of fire excitement this past March while I was in Arizona visiting my mom. Yes, sometimes these fires DO get out of control! Yikes.

19 comments:

  1. All the machinery looks familiar. We had a moco in our field today cutting the hay. Unfortunatly, it broke down, so we'll resume on Friday when the part comes in!

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  2. Great pictures! We need a tractor so bad. We don't have wheat to harvest but we have to have our hay pastures done on shares so basically we have someone else (that is lucky enough to have all the haying machinery needed) bale it and they get 2/3 and we get 1/3 of the hay off of our land. The problem is the two people we have done this with have both been less concerned with quality as how much hay they can get. So they cut it later than I would, resulting in more hay but hay with less nutritional value. (sigh) Maybe someday we will have our own tractor & baler!

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  3. Very interesting! This seems so early for harvesting, but then again I don't know much about wheat. I posted about our oats today...they ripen in July.

    I didn't realize the wheat field stubble gets burned off before the next crop.

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  4. Great post and photo!!
    Beautiful where you live!!

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  5. Beautiful snaps. Harvesting is a busy period for farmers. Proper rain is the best reward for all the hardwork

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  6. We have a lot of harvesting going on here too, but they don't do the burning. I bet that is interesting.

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  7. I bet it will look amazing when they burn the fields - but do stay safe.

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  8. Cool photos!

    Everyone's cutting and baling hay where I live.

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  9. I hope they got a good crop this year. Hopefully you'll be able to capture a couple pics of the fiery night skies - staying safe of course.

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  10. Love that Green color - there are a lot of tractors and combines built at the Waterloo, Iowa plant...

    Seems backwards to me as we have planted and are waiting for the corn to be "knee high" by the 4th of July...

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  11. Interesting post and great pictures! Can´t wait to see your pictures from the (controlled) fires.

    My younger son loves the farmers´work

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  12. LOL - LOL, it´s me again!!

    I had to laugh about the comment on my blog about the temperature... it wasn´t the temperature of the weather, but the fever of my son.....

    LOL

    The temperature of the weather we had today, was only 20° Celcius so the fever is higher, with about over 39°Celcius...

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  13. Bentonflocke, I too thought it was the temperature in your part of the world!

    Oz Girl, I wanted to try to comment in German because I admire Bentonflocke for her blogging in English for us to read. I just think it is so cool that she can do that.

    Cora, the baby bunny, was MIA all day yesterday - now I'm worried that something got her....

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  14. Love these photos. Where I live there's not a lot of farming. You'll see the wide open spaces but usually just cows or horses. They never do any harvesting or growing anything. Good job!

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  15. Oh my, Love your photo blog too! Great pics!! -Tammy

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  16. I thought it is early also, but no one grows wheat around me. I don't think the landscape is suitable to grains, you need the large, flat acreage like that in your photos.

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  17. Is there anything better than John Deere green?

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  18. The green machinery against the green grass is very nice. Great shots of Kansas life.

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  19. Great photos! Harvest time already..our small grains are not headed out yet..and lots of the corn will not make the knee high for the 4th of July either. It has been a strange cold summer so far here:)

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I love all your comments, thank you!