hey everybody welcome back to walker farms nick welker here
we're back and uh they're still cropped to cut about a thousand acres of wheat
about 1100 acres of chickpeas there's weather coming this weekend so
we're gonna get the wheat knocked out before the weekend
just got everything serviced took a little while i'm gonna probably jump in
uh quadzilla over here and then we're gonna
run him out to the field and get to going let's roll let's go
guys
so this is our hails fields and you can see the damage here
destroys all the heads knocks them down beats them up this one was hit multiple
times once there once there the heads are beat
so you can see there's a bunch of kernels knocked out of them some of
these heads are chopped in half like this one
and then on the ground it's just scattered with all the green but the
problem is okay like this one this one's knocked
over well you think well they're still grainy i can still catch it
well the problem is when that stem got destroyed there's no grain in that
it never had a chance to finish growing because it severed it
so some of this is like three four bushels an acre and then some of it are
up there where it didn't hail is 40 bushels an acre pretty
amazing honestly things are getting pretty dry out this
part in montana in fact actually uh my buddy tony fast who farms about six
hours east of us has had some horrendous fires roll
through that country fortunately none of his crops been burnt that i know of but
he said a couple homes were burnt down a lot of acres
and uh i've been hearing the fires all around here too so
it's dry it's that time of the year i'm gonna take big brew get them out there
because we need fire fighting capabilities there
at all times so like always we'll keep the brute with
us where we go and the reason is we've got this that's
the fire tamer remote controlled fire nozzle allows me
to get up in the action hopefully uh put the fire out whether
it's a combined fire or a field fire or at least keep it under control until
the fire department can show up we have a great fire department just
always great to have a machine there on site within the first few minutes of
fire because you can control it then you can stop a
big wreck from happening i've been getting a lot of comments as to why are
we using a grain bagger when we just put up all that big storage
on the farm that's a great question i can totally
understand why you're being asked here's why okay so
we had last year 50 000 bushels of grain on the ground you know big grain tarps
that we had 50 000 bushels on the ground and another 45 000 bushels was in our
buildings so our equipment had to sit outside this
year we're in the same boat so we're going to have 100 000 bushels
of storage that needs to go somewhere we built only 70 000 bushels of storage
seventy seventy five thousand in that area
so that means thirty around twenty five thirty forty
thousand bushels we don't know yex we're not done harvest has to go somewhere so
we have another thirty to fourty thousand bushels
we gotta put it somewhere where is that going to go we're not putting it back in
those buildings because we want that for storage so we can put big brute or big
buds inside that's where the grain banks are coming
in grand bay is going to take that extra 30 to 40 000 bushels
and keep it out of the weather and safe until
when it comes that we can build more grain bins those things aren't cheap
guys grahams are expensive that was a big chunk of money we threw
out this year to get our grain storage where it needs to be
and it's actually not there yet it's just how it is but we are behind
we're finally making some progress in that road so i hope that answers your
question as to why are we using grain bags
because we needed to we had to otherwise it was going to be on the ground or in a
building and the equipment was going to be outside
so that's why i'm in the blue peterbilt windows are up it's getting hot in here
and uh this thing doesn't have ac and i feel
kind of trapped to tell you the truth there's a lot of crawler creepy
crawling things outside
so compared to our other auger that we have i really love this westfield auger
and the reason for is that the backbone keeps it structurally sound
it doesn't want to droop it doesn't want to sway it just stays where it wants to
be or where you set it to be i also love the hydraulic winch where
you can use the drive over pit to lift it up
and swing it on in i love the fact that the drive over pit is actually part of
the auger so you don't have to have another pickup or something else to move
the other driver pit that we had around there's a few things that i think
that can be upgraded eventually but honestly i
why didn't we have this years ago
when you start getting nicer things you're like oh man oh
what were we thinking all these years no actually other ones were did they did
pretty well but it is really nice so we're on
the second to the last spin over here and
let's go get another load so a lot of you probably think that
we are very talented and uh hard working and professionals
you know we're just we know exactly what we're doing
well i hate to break it to some of you but
we're not as hard working as a lot of people out there we're not professionals
like a lot of people out there and we're not as talented as a lot of
people out there but what we're trying to do
is we're trying to do the best that we can with what we were given
and if something's broken try to fix it uh
trying to make it work and a lot of times we don't do it the right way so we
have to do it over again but we're willing to do the best
that we can and a lot of times i think people lately have been like you guys
are just professionals and i'm like oh man i
do not feel that way because i make a lot of mistakes and when we
when we're working on the farm there's just so many things that
go wrong and well because we we weren't thinking ahead and um
but you know i appreciate the compliment but i wanted you guys to know that
we screw up a lot too so don't feel bad if you guys screw up and think oh man
welkers would be disappointed in me yes yes i would be
absolutely no no no no no i we're we screw up a lot you might not
finds mine for at least a couple days yeah yeah
good stuff put the montana flag back on it so uh we
got the fbn farmer first flag we got the montana
flag case size flags on the cart i got a
couple more flags to throw up throughout the season
we'll get there um my left side of my cutter bar just quit working let's go
investigate find out what's going on before i ruin something
yeah i suppose that could be a problem i'm gonna
break that loose good caught it i smell rubber burning though so
probably slipped for a little while
all right close i'm gonna take that out of the field
old cable off something who knows see all that kind of gray looking land
over there that's what we call scab land it is borderline worthless
ground for farmers now before the keyboard warriors say
well that's because you guys robbed the ground of all its nutrients
that's because you over fertilize and round up killed to sterilize the soil
that's because you guys cut all the trees down and tried to farm that ground
and ruined it no background has been like that since
there was ice covering this land before the the big flood the ice age
it's been like that ever since that's shale ground there's no topsoil there's
shale literally who knows how far down
underground that comes up and it crests the surface of this of the soil
and goes back down again those little shale outcroppings or whatever you want
to call them it is sterile and uncapable of growing
any type of crop on it you want me to prove it that grass
that's trying to grow in there right now that's
barely surviving has had the chance to grow on that same ground without any
human beings messing with it for since the ice age so yeah that's how
it is there's parts of the land around here that are
just junk land we call it junk land because in our eyes
it is worthless ground it can't feed animals it can't grow crops
and i don't know anyone that'd want to build a house on it just a little
information for you there enjoy it that's another piece of shale
ground right in the middle of the field nothing grows on it it's kind of got a
blue tinge to it that's shale it's just the way the
glaciers when they carved out this ground
way way way way way back when i don't know
how many thousands of years ago they left all the rock here too if you guys
want to know why your fields have all that rock it's from the glaciers you can
thank glaciers for that one canadian glaciers came down from canada
but canada didn't exist back then so i guess we can't blame the canadians in
fact such a worthless little chunk of ground right there maybe about one acre
that uh we pile rocks on it which i actually want to get taken off there
because i don't like them there but not even kosher will grow on that
coastal grow just about anywhere that was pretty amazing and by the way guys
we do have merchandise available on our website welcomefarms.com
merchandise or you can go to farmfocus.com click on the welcome page
and check it out there or it's in the link in the description below
somewhere down there but yes there is merchandise available you guys want any
of this welker gear hats right no sorry that is not a
welcome shirts this is a welcome shirt we do
have this this is our custom international
9370 international harvester 9370 eagle shirt with the stars and the
flag colors and stuff anyways good shirt
really like it very comfy you guys want some go check it out if
not that's cool just get an old white t-shirt draw
welcome on it somewhere that'll be almost as good there's
another one got some chunks of wood looks like some cable maybe a hood off a
car some other items in that pile that were probably there for my great grandpa
i don't know how long ago that stuff in there but it's been there a while all
right back in the crop
so i got the other side of the field and this side is what got the hail storm
that came through it's already thin to begin with so it's
only going to be like 20 bushel wheat i'm doing 11 and 12.
looking at the ground here tons of heads on the ground
that hail to slice the heads right off and i bet the heads that are on the
ground if i do pick them up they probably don't even have any kernels in
them they're probably just shriveled so yeah that's a bummer we collected
insurance on this so it's not like a loss but still man it took its
toll here oh well we'll uh we'll burn through it it won't
take too long get this knocked out move on to the good stuff we still got some
good land left not a lot but a little bit of good stuff
it's been nice to do ready all right
yeah he's having a busy day been gone for about three days
uh and uh consequently he hasn't been able to do his farm duty so he's all
excited about being back and being able to do that farm duty
uh patrol and chase via pnc
all right let's keep him running kobe want a drink
let's see
as you can see he's uh chased about three to four rabbits today
i think he's uh doing the recharge moment there's quite a bit of straw that
i'm taking in the reason why i'm cutting so much straw
is i'm cutting close to the surface of the ground
because there are some what they call hangers
uh when the crop is hit by the hail and it doesn't break it off part way
down from the head it bends it over well depending on how
sharp that bend is it might go ahead and fill out
and actually have uh some kernels but it can be hanging down fairly low
um and so if you're cutting up normal you probably wouldn't pick that up
most of them i found though are fairly shriveled
so a lot of them were at the at that part of the time
so anyway got uh got it emptied and he's waiting for the
other combine and i'm cutting up and turn around and
we'll do that dance again i don't know what is going
on but all of a sudden my feeder house is
not feeding weed in kept trying hoping that it would start feeding and
it didn't let's take a look it just might be jammed on this uh
draper here the cross auger i disabled because i didn't really
think we needed it through a lot of this because uh
well wheat's pretty easy feeding but i don't know we're in uh we're in some
nice wheat right now i know guys just like oh man hail damage
terrible yields are bad and now i'm in 50 bushel
wheat and it's literally a quarter of a mile
from that spot if that i don't know it's amazing so this is
good wheat it's uh picked up went from seven eight
nine bushel to 50 bushel in just a little bit so i
guess the hail didn't hit this area but let me pull this out
there all right back to all mining let's go things to do stuff to see buds
to push leg arms tickle
so
beautiful moon tonight came up just absolutely gorgeous in the horizon
yields on this field are running 25 bushels an acre
because half of it is like 45 bushel an acre
and the other half was hailed which is like 20 bushels an acre
which that would be more than 40 25 average so i don't know how that's
working out but anyways it's okay it's not bad
but we're making good progress on it and we'll get this part done probably shut
down the night get up early in the morning get going if
all goes to plan we'll finish wheat before the storm comes which is in about
three days wish us luck let's get this done going 17 miles an hour through the
field right now road and back and these lsw 1400s
ride so nice oh it's so smooth just glide across the
field i wish so badly we could have fit these
under our big bud all right the routine every night
empty the combines out pull up next together line the headers up and uh we
always park on the ground with the least amount of
flammable stuff i can burn just in case something's hot on the combine and drops
on the ground during the night and start to fire
and then idle them down let them cool shut them off grab all our stuff out and
head home only to start it over again the next day
every day for like a month and a half straight
gotta get it perfect gotta get it perfect
oh i overshot a little bit i think wait nope drop it down
a little more match his a little more a little more yep perfect nailed it
good night