Oklahoma Winter Wheat Harvest

What sort of farmer plants his fields in the fall, worries about the cold, then hopes for snow so his crop will survive? That would be a farmer planting winter wheat. If you’ve eaten bread, chances are you’re enjoyed the fruits of his labor. Of all the varieties of wheat, the grain that lies dormant through a northern winter is the one that reaches bread-baking perfection at summer harvest time. It’s a tough grain, but on the windswept plains the farmers are tougher

Tom Stephens and his grandson Sterling keep their eyes on the sky. As Tom looks up he says, “Well, what do you think? We going to be able to keep cutting today? Maybe another 30-45 minutes to an hour.”

When you’re bringing in 3000 acres of wheat, the weather can determine if you have a successful crop or a total loss for the season. Tom says the work can be intensive, “Well, we’re cutting a little hard red winter wheat in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Cloudy, overcast. We normally have about 10 percent humidity during wheat harvest and we had 98% this morning. It’s rare that we have that kind of humidity here during wheat harvest, but every year’s different and this year we happened to have it."

Tom farms close to ten thousand acres near Guymon, Oklahoma. This time of year ,the wheat sweeps across the landscape: a golden carpet as far as the eye can see. Tom runs cattle as well as raising corn and wheat. Harvest time for him means long hours in the cab of a combine. He starts his day soon after sunup and stays in the fields well into the night. It’s a schedule he’s come to accept.

“Normally the moisture will come up at night and that’s the reason we quit when we did last night. Had it been dry, we probably still would have been cutting when the sun come up. ‘Cause we gotta get it in. We’re ten days behind normal on our harvest right now. because of the weather.”

Tom will bring in close to 180 thousand bushels of wheat during harvest. That’s just under 11 million pounds! The combine sweeps up the stalks and separates the grain. There’s no stopping to unload.  His grandson, Sterling drives a grain cart alongside. As the combine fills, it empties its load into the cart. Each pass through the field sweeps up 36 feet of wheat.

Tom remembers when the winter wheat harvest was a lot different, “When I was a kid, we used to have pull type Baldwins. You pulled them with a tractor. You didn’t have any cab and comfort to it. You was in the dirt, the cold and the heat. So I’m pretty fortunate. We have a GPS guidance system. Where we can just flip it on and drive straight through the fields. We have moisture testers, moisture sensors to let us know what our moisture is constantly on the go.”

Wheat is Oklahoma’s number one crop and a mainstay for American agricultural exports. Winter wheat is planted in September and over the winter the cold and the snow actually benefit this grain. If there’s snow on it it’s even better because if it’s got a complete cover, because it’s warmer under there than it is on the outside.

Tom and his crew drive their combines,with almost military precision,through the golden fields of grain. This harvest represents a major investment. Farming on this scale is expensive. While they’re efficient and comfortable, each combine costs in excess of a quarter million dollars.

Tom says, “We still put a lot of hours in, but we do it in more comfort than we did. We still take the same risks and maybe even more risks because everything costs much more money nowadays than it did before. So we have a lot more money at risk at all times.”

Moving from afternoon to evening, Tom and Sterling keep their eyes on the sky. It’s the reality for farmers everywhere: working against time and the weather. Tom is philosophical about it, “The farmer, the American farmer is totally at risk as far as weather conditions all the time. We either get too much rain or we don’t get enough or it comes at the wrong time. But it’s a good life. It’s a good place to raise your family.”

The Staff of Life
It’s believed that wheat was first used to make bread some 12 thousand years ago. It takes less than ten seconds for a combine to harvest enough wheat for 70 loaves of bread. And one acre will produce enough wheat for some 2 thousand five hundred loaves.