Sherry: 30 years on the harvest run

Hey ya’ll!! Sherry Zimmerman, with Zimmerman Farms out of Bishop, TX. We are a family-run business with my husband Brian driving a truck, Wailynn and Wyatt run our combines, Wesson operates the tractor and buggy, and Whitleigh and I are the cooks, along with whatever else it takes to help keep them running– we also hire truck drivers for fall harvest, this year we have Billy and Gary.  We have run combines and cotton pickers every summer for the past 30 years! Yes, this harvest is our 30th harvest anniversary. Wahoo!! We are so thrilled to share it with you!

Hope y’all are doing well and enjoying the crisp fall weather!  We are presently in southwest Kansas in the middle of our fall harvest. We started our fall harvest around September 10. We have harvested a bit of dryland milo that was planted early.  The weather was on the fritz, so the moisture has been all over the place, so we had several late starts and quittin’ early days. But once the weather began to cooperate, we got to cutting.  The yields hung around 62-88 bushels per acre. Our machines have been running smoothly, with a few minor hiccups.  However, we quickly ran into green milo, so we had to jump on corn.

We cleaned up and serviced the machines, changed out the concaves and hooked up to the corn headers, then began the corn harvest. So far, we have harvested dryland and irrigated corn. This part of Kansas received quite a bit of rain during the growing season. So, both crops have been pretty good yields. Up to this point, we have harvested corn yielding around 62 bushels per acre for dryland and 210 bushels per acre for irrigated corn.  Wailynn, Wyatt, and Wesson have been busy!  The weather has been great for harvesting corn! Our machines have continued to run steadily, with one noteworthy issue: Wyatt’s corn header had a slip clutch that got extremely hot, which heated up the gearbox on a chopping part, which then caught the ground on fire, along with the dry corn stalks and leaves. But nothing the boys couldn’t stomp out! Thankful for these quick responding boys! Other than that, this fall harvest has been flowing great this year!

We actually began our summer harvest back in May with wheat. We had a rather long wheat harvest this year.  We normally conclude wheat harvest in early July and head back to South Texas to harvest our milo crop and cotton crop.  Well, this year we split our combines, and I ran at home with Wyatt and Wesson on milo, and Brian continued to run in Oklahoma with Wailynn until August 2, average yields for wheat ran about 55 bushels per acre. It was a soppy wheat harvest run. The weather was not cooperative; however, we were able to get out all that we could.  At home in Bishop, all crops are dryland.  Our milo crop was about 5000lbs per acre, which is a great crop for us. We had great weather and were able to run without any major issues. Thank goodness, since we were without Brian. But whatever issues we did have. Wyatt, Wesson, and with the help of my father-in-law, David, and brother-in-law Burt, we were able to fix any issues.  Also, at home in Bishop, we picked our cotton crop in August.  We never know what is gonna go wrong when it’s cotton-picking time, but we can always guarantee something will.  But to our surprise, we had a trouble-free run. We harvested an average of 2 bales an acre of cotton.  We did, however, have some weather delays, but they were welcomed since we had been pushing hard since May.

Hope y’all enjoy our adventures this year! as we always look forward to sharing them! See y’all- soon!!