Richard Shank
Columnist
The 2025 wheat harvest had a later than usual start at the Shank farm, but produced a happy ending.
Shortly after noon on July 3, four John Deere combines with 40-foot headers descended on an 80-acre field in southern Ottawa County. Barely two hours later all that remained was a couple water holes, which never dried following June rains in north central Kansas.
It was a fun harvest to view as a spectator to observe how farming has changed since my youth in these same fields.
Bill Came, Jr. farms the Shank spread and thousands of other acres for himself and a multitude of other landowners. The Came operation is flawless and fast with total efficiency and timing. We once joked that if you go inside for a few moments for a glass of ice tea, you just might miss the harvest.
Legend says a wheat crop, like a cat, has nine lives. An old-timer once admonished me to not spend the crop until it is in the bin. Another prognosticator was heard to say “looks are especially deceiving on a field of wheat.” Many years, the crop will yield better than it looks in the field. Then, on other years the opposite may be true.
The sheer weight of today’s combines is a little mind boggling. I am told the combines may weigh more than 40,000 pounds, with bins holding nearly 300 bushels of the golden grain. So, these combines with a full bin may weigh as much as 60,000 pounds as they roll across a wheat field. A drive though the old neighborhood reveals combine tracks and some are two to three feet deep in wet fields so common to this year.
Several 18-wheelers were parked along the road waiting for deliveries of wheat from the combine or from grain carts pulled by tractors who circle the fields behind the combines. Once the semi-trucks are loaded with approximately 1,000 bushels of grain it is time for a 12-mile to the Scoular Elevator, a few miles to the east of Salina. At the elevator, I did not see one pickup or a ton and a half truck hauling wheat that day. It was a sea of 18-wheelers. A sign on the scale office at the elevator alerted farmers they were open until 11 p.m.
Riding a combine these days is a slice of Heaven as compared to my growing up years. First, riding inside a fully air-conditioned cab must be called a “leap in technology” as compared to 1960. A set of gauges to the right of the steering wheel really got my attention. One gauge reported the yield at that moment and a second noted the yield of the total field. Several other gauges reported additionally aspects of the grain, including moisture content. My dad would never understand this new-fangled farming.
It was a good crop and yielded almost 60 bushels per acre, one of the best in more than a century of family ownership.
If all goes as planned, several days following the harvest, and if Mother Nature cooperates, planters will crisscross the farm planting Milo in the wheat stubbles. That process is called “double cropping” of after harvest milo.
My grandfather purchased the farm being harvested in 1913 for $9,500 or $118 per acre, a hefty sum for that era. On August 11, 1925, he purchased a quarter section across the road to the east at an auction held on the steps of the Ottawa County Courthouse in Minneapolis. I have not been told why the sale was consummated on the courthouse steps, but always found the sale location interesting. Coincidentally, an 80-and 40-acre farm was sold at the same time and the families of the purchasers have retained ownership of all three pieces of property a century later, something not uncommon to farms in north central Kansas.
As we bumped across the field sitting in a cab of the combine, I could not help but think about harvests of the past. I hauled my first load of wheat in 1962 to the Niles elevator, in a 10-year-old Ford pickup, which remains in the family. At most, the pickup hauled 90 bushels per load. If time permitted, we stopped at the blacksmith shop in Niles to buy a soft drink to tidy me over until the next load.
Then, 45 years ago in 1980, we finished harvesting close to July 10 on a day when the thermometer eclipsed 110 degrees. As we were finishing, the old Massey Harris combine breathed its last, never to cut another acre of wheat, and we towed it home behind a tractor.
In 1990, my brother and I were home to help my dad cut his last crop in advance of his retirement from 63 years in the business. This time around, another Massey Ferguson combine quit on us and we had to hire a neighbor to help finish. It was quite a finale for my dad’s last hurrah in farming.
Commenting on the state of farming, one farmer told me grain prices are not low this year, they are “pitifully low.” On the other hand, this same farmer said livestock prices are as high as they have ever been, so farmers would be wise to diversify their operation. Hopefully, our leaders in Washington are about to resolve issues regarding tariffs and the ongoing trade war resulting in more grain sales to foreign nations.
Despite the adverse news, I did not interact with one farmer who is planning to leave the business, a real testimonial to a way of life that is loved by those who live it. Speaking to all these sodbusters who help feed the “not always appreciative world,” may all your future harvests be bountiful.
