September Farm News
September farm news? Already? How is it nearly the end of summer?? We’re spinning in circles asking ourselves this question with increasing alarm (and volume). Harvest is wrapping up, we’re getting ready to bring the new season’s products into the warehouse, and all the staff are in super-planning mode trying to fit in all our last few summer bucket list items.
Harvest so far
Ask anyone on the farm how the harvest season is going and they’ll hesitate for a moment with a don’t-want-to-jinx-it look on their face before replying “actually it’s going really well!” The winter wheat, spring wheat, green peas, and brown lentils are all in, and now we’re just waiting on the garbanzo bean fields to dry down a little more. We’ve had a few sporadic late-summer showers in the last week or two, which owner Kevin Mader said can actually be helpful at this stage: if a crop is almost ripe, just a little green around the edges, and we get a bit of moisture on it, as it dries it seems to help finish the ripening faster. He says he sees this in wheat, too, not just the beans.
Timeline to the finish line
We have a little over 2,300 acres of chickpeas to cut, and are hoping we’ll be able to get the combines out into those fields after Labor Day. If everything is dried down sufficiently, it can all get slicked off in as little as five days, said field maintenance manager Tyler Mertes, but if the guys have to ‘patch’ around the still-green spots, there’s a pretty significant loss of efficiency and it can take them up to two weeks to get everything in. As always, we’ll be watching the weather forecast like it’s our job (which, yeah it literally is) and depending on what we see there will decide to start patching if there is a significant change in conditions on the horizon.
High team spirit
Over hundreds of years and many generations, harvest time has earned its reputation of being a grueling slog of constant work and little rest. This year? “Hasn’t been so bad,” said Kevin. Sure, of course the crew had two or three long weeks of the legendary 80-90 hours, but “heck, we used to be running that for eight weeks!” Adding that they have had every Sunday off plus two Saturdays, and they’re getting the full three-day Labor Day weekend off, Kevin laughed as he joked, “they’re dancing on the ceiling out there! They’re practically on vacation, half retired!”
Planning for next year
As anyone in or adjacent to the agriculture industry knows well, there's no rest for a farmer, and the team have been actively thinking about the upcoming fall work all summer long. As they're in the combine or the tractor, they think about what will be planted where, make notes of where the troublesome weed patches are, and scout for low or high moisture areas that affect plant growth and yield. Kevin said they're not actively scouting, per se, but they're looking out the window all day long, and can't help but notice what's going on around them.
During this bit of a break before garbs are ready to cut, all the equipment that isn't needed for that job is taking a turn in the shop, getting cleaned up and ready to go for fall planting, which is tentatively scheduled for the last week or so of September. All the legume ground (chickpeas, lentils, green peas) will be cycled into wheat ground, and most of that will be planted this fall—we plant about eight times more winter wheat than spring!
All of us at PB are looking forward to enjoying the long weekend, but we know there's still lots of work to do to wrap up the season. Deep breath, we've got this!
Cheers, friends! See you in the next one.
