Thomas, OK – No two harvest seasons are ever the same, but as Jones Harvesting prepared for our 44th trek through the heartland it became painfully clear this one would be especially unusual. No amount of planning or pleading can change the weather, and this year a drought scenario not seen in a very long time will be one for the history books.
Every year an area or two go without rains, but to have such a large swath through Texas and Oklahoma be this parched is rare. The western areas of these states have been hit especially hard, with many areas seeing barely an inch of rain since seeding occurred last fall. This meant the best-case scenario was a few acres left to harvest, but for many folks it meant there was simply no harvest at all.
Approximately two-thirds of our Oklahoma wheat was declared a total loss, and the bad news didn’t stop there. Reduced acres in Kansas would be followed by no work in Western Nebraska also suffering severe drought. The continued shift from wheat acres to row crops in the Dakotas has never been more evident than this year. Our South Dakota stop planted so little wheat there will be no need to hire us this year, and our North Dakota job planted every acre to soybeans.
Like many crews, we have scaled back our operation to match the available work. We look a little different this year with just one machine and 70% fewer people along. With the rest of the family back home in Iowa and Minnesota, our summer crew is made up of just Glen, Vernelle, and I….if three people constitutes a crew. Everything feels wrong about this harvest, and nothing seems normal. Our time on the road will last only a few weeks instead of a few months, but a short and sweet harvest still is better than no harvest at all.
Now that we have all that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news out of the way, I’m happy to report that harvest has begun in Thomas. Despite being only a foot tall, there still are some fields worth harvesting scattered throughout Oklahoma’s rust-red countryside. For us, a cluster of fields in one area received a small rain few others received, and that single rain event is responsible for us having any acres here to harvest. You’ll find more cows grazing in the wheat fields here than combines. While some fields have been baled, a large number have been abandoned entirely and disked under.
Ironically, this drought-stricken land has seen numerous rain events that have delayed harvest. But it’s hard to be too upset over rain in an area that desperately needs a drink. The limited fields that survived are yielding 10 to 20 bushels per acre. But with just a trickle of trucks into town every day, the local elevator has completely closed one location during harvest. In fact, Glen was the only truck driver that delivered grain to the elevator for the entire day. Many of the bushels harvested here are going into bins for next year’s seed wheat.
Sometimes record-setting can be fun, but this year farmers and harvesters alike would have preferred to skip writing this chapter in history books. The severity of this drought hasn’t garnered the news headlines it deserves, and we’ve certainly never seen something this serious in over 40 years of harvesting. While the rough start to this season has been discouraging, we refuse to let it set the tone for the entire season. Combines are already rolling in Southern Kansas, and we’re hearing the yields are generally much better. That’s just the kind of news we need to raise our spirits and give us something to look forward to as we wrap up Oklahoma over the next few days.
