Harvest 2011

We missed harvest with my Dad this year.  Life got crazy and traveling the 4 hours to the farm just didn't happen.  Luckily, my cousin was cutting down by Wellington so we drove down to see them and Wyatt had the time of his life!

Waiting for his ride!

Last year he was so afraid of the big combine and tractors.  He wouldn't go near them.  This year he didn't want to stop riding!  What a difference a year makes.  Austin took him on a ride in the combine and they cut a while until the header plugged up.  I am sure with two little kiddos in the cab, Austin could put his full attention into keeping the header cleared out!

Getting out of the combine to work on the header

Plugged!

 After they got the header figured out and the combine back to work, it was time for a tractor ride.  Austin's dad, Eldon, took Wyatt and they were so cute.  This was the first time Wyatt had met Eldon so I was shocked when he went off without a second look back.

Wyatt and Eldon headed to drive the tractor

There is obviously some farming in this little boy's blood.  Maybe next year we will get out to Grandpa Kemper's for harvest.  I have a feeling he will be asking to drive by then.  Wyatt never ceases to amaze me!  Thanks to the Lawless family for letting us have some fun!

Talking it over with Eldon and cousins Austin, Chalea and little Audie

Wyatt Driving the Tractor

 Harvest was always a fun time on the farm.  It usually lasted a good couple of weeks when I was younger.  My Dad and Uncle Marc used two old yellow New Holland combines with a header width about the size of a car. :) It took them forever!  Only one of them had air conditioning too.  Pretty miserable in the KS heat.  They had two old, small grain trucks too.  My brother and I would climb up into the fully loaded trucks and a crawl over all the wheat.  There would be grasshoppers and other dead and alive buggers in there but who cared.  It was kind of like walking in sand.  You would sink as you moved!  My Mom made the best dinners to take out to the guys and it was fun to go riding along to help feed the crew.  I still make a lot of the food she made year after year.  Brings back good memories when I do.  Lots of dust and wheat chaffe blowing.  I need to find some of the old pictures from back then.  I have a VHS video from 82 in the basement.  Pretty funny stuff!  One Summer I worked at the grain elevator, probing wheat trucks till the wee hours of the morning.  Leonard Long and I sat there waiting on those trucks.  The harvest crews that came through town usually had some pretty good looking guys running trucks too so staying up and working was way worth it!  Now my family operates a much larger combine, a semi truck, tractor and grain cart and they aren't out there near as long (provided Mother Nature cooperates).  There is something about a Kansas harvest that just makes me happy.  Hard working people making a living off the land.  Just as it should be.