On the Road to the Wheat Harvest 4
Life on a customer harvest crew is a lot of “hurry up and wait,” said Brady Cooper of Ponca City, who operates a harvesting crew with fellow Ponca City resident Don Schieber.
Cooper and Schieber had their crews in a 250-acre field west of Walters on Thursday morning, but there was little activity until 1:30 p.m. It was overcast all morning, which meant the moisture levels in the wheat heads were too high to harvest. Then Schieber discovered that a belt needed to be replaced in a combine. He drove to Burkburnett, Texas, to buy a new one. Cost: $152.
The six-man crew enjoyed lunch of hot pizza brought in by one of their co-workers during the noon hour.
Finally, a test cut at about 1 p.m. The moisture content came back at 14.2 percent, a little on the high end. By 1:30, they fired up the three combines and commenced cutting.
For more on the life of a custom harvest crew, see Sunday’s Business Section of The Oklahoman.
Jim Stafford
Business News Writer
On the Road to the Wheat Harvest 3
There was gridlock at the Ahpeatone grain elevator of Walters Cooperative Elevator last night. More than 30 trucks with sem-trailers full of wheat waited hours to unload their grain.
Some drivers were more patient than others, said elevator employee Jeff Robinson.
“Our biggest challenge was keeping tempers in check,” Robinson said of the traffic jam that began on the elevator’s grounds and spilled out both ways on the highways.
Eventually, everyone did got to deliver their wheat, but the work day did not end for the Ahpeatone elevator crew until after 1 a.m.
By 1:30 p.m. this afternoon, a line of 10 trucks waited out on the highway for their turn to deliver as the whole process started once again.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
On the Road to the Wheat Harvest 2
Well, the sun DID come out by the time we got to Walters. So did the harvest crews. We started seeing combines working the fields before we got to the grain elevator at Ahpeatone.
Business News Reporter
On the road to the wheat harvest
With Mark Hodges at the wheel, we left town this morning about 8:15 a.m. and drove southwest on the H.E. Bailey Turnpike.
Hodges is executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission and is escorting me and Russ Jowell of the Oklahoma Horizons television show on a tour that is expected to include wheat producing areas around Grandfield, Walters, Frederick and up through Lone Wolf.
First stop was Apache, where we spent a few minutes at the Apache Co-op visiting with manager Kermit Gilbreath.
Most of the wheat around Apache isn’t ready for harvest, but Kermit said the first two truckloads of wheat were delivered to the grain elevator this morning. It came from south of Lawton, grown by a friend of Gilbreath’s.
The co-op also was taking some deliveries of canola this morning, which later will be delivered to a seed crushing operation in Oklahoma City, he said.
It was overcast as Gilbreath stood outside the Co-op headquarters about 9:30 a.m., which meant that conditions aren’t favorable for harvesting.
“The weatherman said at 6:30 this morning before I did my chores that we were going to have sunshine today,” Gilbreath said. “He lied to me.”
We’re back on the road, headed toward Grandfield.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
Harvest field trip!
The 2008 Oklahoma wheat harvest is under way, and we will report directly from the southwestern part of the state on Thursday with photos and interviews of harvest crews, wheat producers and grain elevator operators. I’ll be traveling with Mark Hodges, executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission as we plunge deep into the wheat producing areas from Apache to Walters, Grandfield, Frederick and up through Lone Wolf to I-40.
Stay tuned throughout the day for updates.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
