The Final Numbers: Wheat Harvest 2022

 

I was born during wheat harvest. A rain had taken my dad out of the harvest fields that year, so my arrival didn't even mess with getting the wheat in the bin. 

The photo above was before my recruitment as a truck driver, but I've been taking combine rides for much of my life.

However, through the years, I've had plenty of birthday celebrations right in the midst of harvest, and this year was no exception. 

Before I even had a driver's license, I was helping during harvest, moving the truck closer to the uncut wheat so that my dad didn't waste as much time driving the combine to the truck to dump wheat. This was pre-grain cart days. Or maybe it was just a ploy to get me more comfortable in the truck. At any rate, as soon as I had my learner's permit, I was trucking wheat to the Iuka Co-op.

So it's probably not surprising that one of my favorite Bible verses has something to do with wheat:

John 12: 24

²⁴ Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  

 It's an "everyday" miracle in farm country, I suppose. We plant the hard kernels of wheat in the fall. 

 

These wheat kernels are "pinkish" because they were treated with insecticide.

 

We watch the green sprouts stand "at attention" like miniature soldiers in the brown earth ...

 ... and then become a green blanket.

 

We marvel when snow and ice don't kill the miraculous plants - even though we've seen it again and again.

 

 

 

And then we watch as the warmer temperatures of spring waken the sleeping crop and green heads begin filling with plump, soft berries. 

 

Then comes the rustle of golden wheat ...

 

 

 

... which gives way to the roar of the combine, chopping its way through fields and separating wheat from chaff. (There are Bible verses about that process, too.)

 

 

We have been planning for retirement for several years, and it was Randy's intent all along to "go out with a bang," planting the majority of our crop acres to wheat for our final summer harvest. As it turned out, the "big bang" harvest was last year - the best of our farming career.

 

 

 

This year's overall average was 34 bushels per acre. We had a high of 46 bushels per acre, and a low yield of 19 bushels per acre. That's what happens when you have a dry winter and spring. 

 

It's always interesting to see how start and end dates compare from year to year. Here are the stats since I began blogging:

2010:  June 18
2011:  June 10
2012:  May 26 (an anomaly and the earliest harvest, by far, we've ever had)
2013:  June 21
2014:  June 17
2015:  June 20
2016:  June 15
2017:  June 12
2018: June 12
2019: June 26
2020: June 16

2021: June 17 

2022: June 13 

 

 

The finish dates are all over the board in the past dozen years, too:

2010: June 25

2011: June 20

2012: June 9 (an anomaly)

2013: July 6

2014: July 7

2015: July 1

2016: July 13

2017: June 28

2018: June 29

2019: July 22

2020: July 7

2021: July 12

2022: June 28

June 25, 2022

Yield averages in the years since I've been blogging have been:

2010: 37.2 bu/acre

2011: 36.7 bu/acre

2012: 45.5 bu/acre

2013: 52 bu/acre

2014: 24.5 bu/acre

2015: 50 bu/acre

2016: 48.5 bu/acre

2017: 50.84 bu/acre

2018: 39.2 bu/acre

2019: 23.6 bu/acre

2020: 49.5 bu/acre

2021: 58 bu/acre

2022: 34 bu/acre

As I said earlier, 2021 was our best year ever. Though our average was 58 bushels/acre in 2021, our high yield was 86 bushels per acre. Our low was 31 - just a smidge under our overall average this year.

We had about 1,900 acres planted to wheat this year. We harvested 1,300 ourselves - from June 13 to 28 (with rain delays interspersed). We had about 600 acres of our crop custom harvested. Three combines going all at once can go over acres quickly. 

Next wheat harvest, God willing, we'll still be living in the same house, down the same dirt road. I imagine that if I want to get out in a wheat field to take photos, our neighbors or tenant farmers won't mind too much. 

But it will be different. However - like Vincent Van Gogh - I imagine I'll always find poetry in a wheat field (as long as my ankles aren't itching too badly.)

The wheat field has ...poetry; it is like a memory of something one has once seen. We can only make our pictures speak.

Vincent Van Gogh 

 

“If you stand in a wheat field at this time of year, ... it’s not hard to imagine you’re looking at something out of mythology: all this golden sunlight brought down to earth, captured in kernels of gold, and rendered fit for mortals to eat. But, of course, this is no myth at all, just the plain miraculous fact.” 

 Michael Pollan

American journalist