Pot of Gold? Wheat Harvest 2026

Photo taken Saturday night - June 13, 2026

 

It's not a year when the wheat crop is like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the sun has set on the 2026 wheat harvest. 

June 4, 2026

As my brother aptly described of his harvest in Pratt County, "Wheat 2026 is in the bin. Just didn’t fill the bin."

We don't have the final figures in. The Millers have the wheat custom cut by Frederick Harvesting out of Alden. They started cutting on us last Thursday and finished on Saturday. We are always amazed at how quickly it goes when a custom crew is involved. Back when we were farming full-time, it took a minimum of 10 days to get everything cut ourselves. It often stretched out further with weather delays and breakdowns.

You can barely see the third combine in the dust behind the grain cart.

 

But, when there are three combines in the field with 40-foot headers, things go quickly. (The one combine we owned at the end of our active farming (2022) was 35 feet. Randy says he thought that was big at the time.) 

With a custom crew racing on to the next customer's fields, you often don't get the scale tickets immediately, so we don't have the yield-per-acre numbers yet. 

But it was a year when we didn't get timely rains during the time when the wheat heads were filling, so we knew it wouldn't be a "pot of gold" year for our golden crop. It was a dry winter in our area. Until two weeks ago, we were in a swath of Central Kansas in extreme drought. Now, we're in an area classified as severe drought. 

Randy rode along with one of the combine operators a few times. Saturday morning, we spent quite awhile just watching the action.

Two combines were cutting during most of the time we were there, with a third broken down. 

But they eventually got it running, too, taking even bigger swaths through the fields. 

We were glad they got to our fields when they did. Weeds were starting to emerge, brought on by June rains. Those rains weren't beneficial to the wheat, but it was extremely helpful to alfalfa fields, pastures and fall crops. 

Still, we anticipate that the yields will be a little higher than we initially predicted. 

But time - and those scale tickets - will tell.

Speaking of pots of gold: Our neighbor Gary called us Saturday night and asked if we'd seen the double rainbow to the east. Our house is surrounded by trees, so we had not. But with his call, we hurriedly put on shoes and went down the road for a better view.

And what a view it was! 

 We had never seen a double rainbow that lasted so long and was so vivid. What a treat!

 We watched until the clouds swallowed up the rainbow.

 The photos don't do it justice. What a blessing to see an unobstructed view!