An AMERICAN Corn Harvest

Back to it. Looked over some things, should be ready to go. Meet the Peterson family. Our dad, the three Peterson brothers, and our families farm together in central Kansas. Our family farm started in 1882 and has been raising cattle and crops ever since. Please subscribe to this channel and give us a like and a comment if you enjoy the video. On dry land, so I'm starting by myself. A lot easier to start by yourself on dry land where you can go down and back without a full bend. This corn is making about 85 bushel to the acre. I think that's about what Milo would have made here, so I'm fine with choosing to put corn here. Milo we would have done later, we would have planted later, and you know, whether it would have done more with that, those rains we had in August, I don't know. And if we'd have planted the corn later for it to use the rains in August, I don't know. Over here at Lindsborg by Greg's house, he got less rain than us out there by the feedlot all summer long, which is backwards from how it usually is. That's what we get for planting corn over here, but you know, it's making grain. We will live to fight another year on it. Kind of turn around one of these times. It's a Thursday morning. That heifer right there is starting to calve. So I'm watching her. I saw her whenever I was loading feed, I could tell she was kind of starting. I tagged that one in the pen yesterday, and then that one that's walking back with its mom was born later last night in the evening, and I did not tag it yet. All right, we're back in the saddle this morning. It's Thursday. Going to be working on this field for the foreseeable future. Nice big field. Nice backdrop. My house is right over there, so I'm nice and close to home. There, my dad's raking the ends. I've swapped up. He's done raking here. This millet sat still for a lot of July, then it looked like it was going to take off in August, but it just never really did. It will make for some pretty good grazing, though, because it's right next to the feedlot at my dad's, the pens at my dad's. So I just got back from taking a load in to the elevator. Two things, two stories from the trip. Brooke Anna was at the downtown coffee shop, because every Thursday morning my mom hosts all the little cousins. They all go and play together at my mom's. And then a lot of times the wives, Nathan Kendall and I's wives, go to the coffee shop at Lindsberg. And so my wife was at the coffee shop, and I was driving the semi, and I thought to myself, hey, I should just have her run me out a coffee, because you can't really stop on Main Street with a semi. And so she ordered the coffee, and then she met me out on the road, and it was like going through the drive-through in a semi. She handed me the coffee, so that was fun. Then, because I went a different route, I drove past the preschool there in town, and all the little kids were out in the yard kind of playing at the preschool, and they all did this as I drove past in the semi, and of course I honked my horn at them, and they all just went nuts. So that made my day, honking the horn for those kids. Good job, Nathan! He's going from the grain cart to the semi. I've got a spectator watching me. Look at that bald eagle. That's pretty cool. We're on the outside of this field. A field that we are doing paths through. There you can see the growth. Crop growing right there is much cheaper than spraying along this field to kill weeds all summer. And I don't see very many pigweeds in this field, so that's really nice. We're across some trees, so we're going to go back out to the road and bring it around from the outside. What do you got there, babe? You got some corn. What's on there? You're picking them off? Oh, okay. So we decided not to fence off this little nook, so I just baled it up. So kind of 11 bales from over in this corner, and we'll just make a straight shot fence there so we don't have to fence all this rounded area. It is hard to have a tight fence along a rounded area or a crooked creek. And so this field has, it's 73 acres, has three bins around the creek. So I swathed and baled two of the three nooks, and I will fence off the biggest one to graze. Moved the bales off this corner. I swathed and baled it. And we're straight around the rest of this field to graze. Two bales left of this field. Then I'll get the next field going. We're working on Brighton. We're unloading on the ghost eel. Look at us family farming. It's good to see all these cattle lined up at the bunk in the evening. My dad had a full day in the corn field, and then he showed up to do his chores right at dark. I had the full day in the hay field. Raking this morning and baling this afternoon. And then moving those bales, and then I went right into fencing. Since I had the materials in the back of my truck down there. Then I got my chores finished. Then I have a bachelor party football game deal this weekend. So I'm trying to lock down everything this weekend before I'm gone for a day and a half. Well it's bottle cap season. Got one off a heifer. Alright, I'm all loaded with my 8,000 pound load. I am going to move a pen before I feed. So I can make space. We are going to try to bring the spring cows. We're going to trail them home today. Steers are running out of the pen. Spring pairs are going to come home on this pond. And then I'm going to let them in onto this fence. So then we can get those 450 pound steers. Well calves, steers, and heifers that are on our spring cows to learn how to eat out of the book. Today's the day we are going to go from this side of the fence. The cows have been on. There's 35 pair out here. Pretty much gone. There's some left. But this side has rich, lush forage. We're going to turn them onto that. And then move this fence that's right here. About maybe 50 yards that way. So that they can still have access to water. I've already got one cow very interested in what I'm doing. She's looking over at that other feed like, wow that looks good. Usually when I move cows they're a bit hungrier than this. They're on some pretty good forage. And I have some new cows in here that have never done rotationally grazing with me. But there's a new cow. She's coming. A couple other ones. So I'm hoping to bait them a little bit. Get them across there. Some of these cows aren't as calm as some. But they let me scratch them occasionally. They say, why are you touching me? You're supposed to just feed me. This is some nice mullet here. Letting the cows into a new paddock. So a lot of calves are at the back here. Hopefully their mom will find them. In that tall stuff. I'm going to leave some of this stuff. I'm going to move the wire this direction. So they'll be able to reach some of this grazed off stuff still. Hopefully their moms don't all come running out of there looking for their calves. While I'm still building the fence. There's one of the pairs still on the wrong side of the wire. And then there's like three or four that came running back out of there. To go back where they last saw their calves. So Greg and I will have to deal with that. When we put this fence in, it was pretty soft ground. And now Greg and I are having to hammer it in. Well, my dad came out. So we've got Greg over there. My dad over here. We're walking them to this corner where they're used to getting water. And so hopefully they'll just cross where the wire is not up yet. Okay, I'm going to open this gate over. We're going to bring the cows home through my neighbor's pasture gate. And then right on to our pond dam. Which neighbors the Penn 7 that they're going to go into. So I don't know if any of you remember. But this is the pasture from my uncle we burned. And then there's our pasture right there with the cows on it. His bred heifers are already home. So we're going to come through this pasture. I'm going to grab this group of 31 pairs. So some of them are coming in off the sedan. And some of them are out on the grass. I'm going to try calling them here. Moose! Got a pretty good trail here. 60 to 70 animals out there. The cows look pretty big today. They look closer to weaning. My dad was asking how much they weighed. I said 450 to 525. But I think there's some over 525. Some of these cows have made this trip before. They know where they're going. The determining factor on when we move cows home is sometimes what's growing in the field next to them. Because then we can either graze corn stalks or we can walk them across corn stalks. But we have a quarter section of beans that we can't... I wouldn't want to walk them on the road next to all those beans. Because then they could go out in there. So that's why we're going through the neighbor's pasture. See, there's a couple calves. Pretty good size. They're wasting a lot of energy going up and down this hill. Now they get to go downhill. So they'll like that. But I try not to go too fast. Come on, Pokey. I would say one of my favorite parts about working in agriculture is rotationally grazing cows. They just get so trained. And they follow you. And they trust you. And of course you're raising a really quality beef product managing your resources. So I'd say that's basically my favorite part of working farm and ranching. I'm going to be able to go through that dip. And my dad will. But I don't think Greg's going to want to take his truck through the dip I just drove through. The cows don't mind. They walk on uneven terrain all the time. So we've walked about half a mile maybe. And then there's our silo right there. And we're even closer to the little paddock they're going to be on of weeds. We're almost home. Just got to get them through this gate. All right, we just about got them through the gate. There's a little break in the trees there. That they will squeeze through. There's their new pen right there around the pond. There, they were happy to see the water. Came running down the hill. Big as a calf. Currently we are doing every other bottle with this little calf. That she does a good job. Trying to get to the point where I don't have to wrestle her. She won't do it for the camera. So kind of during chore time or when I have a little time here and there I've been getting the drill ready to drill wheat. We've worn out these old coulters. And so we're putting on some new ones. We went with this wavy style that's a little less aggressive than this turbo till style. In our heavy clay soil the turbo ones did a fine job. They just disturbed a lot of ground. And with our heavy clay they kind of throw it to the outside sometimes especially if it's a little wet. And in our no-till a lot of times we end up in wet spots. So a lot of guys with these drills around us have gone to these. You can see they're real narrow. I'm hoping maybe for a little better penetration in hard ground too. Just less surface area to get into the ground. It has to crack it and then let the opener do its thing. So we're getting these on. You can see they are started at 17 inches. And that's what these are. So we wore plenty. But that's the nice thing about this drill is you have quite a bit of wear to work with and then not too expensive parts. Get out of here cricket. So not too bad to rebuild. And we'll see how it does. That's a pretty sweet morning rain on a Sunday. I like her because she has white. Because she ain't wicked though. Yeah. You have fun times with the bottle cap in the yard. Okay these heifers been here. They were July and August purchases. They're eating really good. They're going to get bumped up to a different pen. Some of them are catching up with the weight to the ones that have been here since May. So we're selling the bunch from April and May. And then these ones are getting bunched with them. There's your gate accent girls. Here's the heifers we're going to sell. Pot load of them. All right it is Monday morning after another busy weekend. We are back to corn harvest. Another field for the neighbors here. This one was a flood irrigated field. So another irrigated corn field. This should keep us busy for most of the day. Nathan and I are over here to get started. Going to give some pre weaning shots to these home raised calves today. Nice spring corn calves. Working some home raised calves today. They're pre weaning shots. There go the cows of these calves we just worked. So here you see them walking next to some 530 pound cattle that we bought last week. So they're not far behind 530 pounds. I'm here at MKC in Lindsburg unloading some corn in the semi. And it's getting pretty dark over to our west. I don't know if it's going to hit us or not. It's been dark to the north all morning. It's been raining over by Salina. It seems to be kind of moving this way. But we'll see if we can keep going or not. All right so the neighbors that we are harvesting corn for are actually opening a restaurant here in Lindsburg. Well it's an ice cream place but they also have burgers and stuff. I'm going to park the semi here and grab lunch at the place owned by the people we're harvesting for. So that's kind of funny. All right here it is the Barnyard Creamery. This is their first day open. Hello. Wow look at this service. There you go. Thank you. We have to unload on the road on this flood irrigated field. Too steep of a ditch. Well we got rained out halfway through the afternoon. Got about half this flood irrigated field done. I'll go home and edit some video for you guys. My first time off in a while to edit some video. I've gotten pretty far behind. I think I've got a couple hours of footage to sort through. You'll be watching this video in a couple weeks probably. But I'll be editing the video that comes out today. Hey look the bald eagle's back. I wonder if this is the same one as the other day. He must just follow the combines around. We were trying to get a place fenced for these heifers. Moved the bales off the pads. But I made it now. Nathan and I unrolled the wire and now we need to put up posts. Okay last post is in the ground. Here's what they're going to graze. Nathan we're going to tighten the wire one more time. And then we are going to get the fence hot and turn them out. Letting them out. We've got plenty of time to find the hot wire before dark. Good to eat. Got some corn? No. You dropped it. No I didn't. You've got to take your hand out of your mouth. Are you hiding? No. Thanks for watching everyone. 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