A Nebraska Harvest While Indiana Waits

We traveled to Nebraska this weekend to celebrate our granddaughter's first birthday. As it turns out, the timing also gave me an opportunity to help my son-in-law with his soybean harvest.

Back home in Indiana, our fields were still wet and muddy when we left, and our soybeans needed some sunshine and wind to dry things out. We're planning to get started Thursday when we return, so I had a little time to lend a hand while we were here.

I started out riding along with my son-in-law in the combine, getting familiar with his operation and enjoying the opportunity to see how someone else does things. Then I moved over to the grain cart to help keep the combine moving.

Farming in this part of southeast Nebraska isn't much different from farming in northeast Indiana, with one notable exception: we don't have to navigate terraces back home.

Harvesting around the terraces requires following their contours and sometimes taking partial cuts with the header to accommodate the slope of the ground. It's a time-consuming process compared to the relatively straightforward back-and-forth harvesting we can do on our flatter Indiana fields.

The rolling landscape, gravel roads, and terraced fields make for some interesting scenery. And while the terrain and equipment may differ, the objective remains the same: get the crop harvested safely and efficiently.

We came to Nebraska to celebrate our granddaughter's first birthday. Getting to spend a little time in the combine and grain cart with my son-in-law was an unexpected bonus.

Thursday, we'll be back in Indiana, hopefully with some drier fields and soybeans ready to harvest.

Until then, here are a few pictures from harvest in southeast Nebraska.

J&K Smith Family Farms
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