hello welcome to Kate's Ag today is the first official full day of harvest on our
Montana farm and i hope to take you along for it we are getting the combines ready right now
now we're getting everything ready for the morning and this is what we found in my dad's tire which
is so crazy so we're gonna have to find a way to get it out my dad's all the way at the top there
and i'm here with Arvid and you're going to be running our other combine which is super exciting
yeah we're happy to have you on the team since i haven't run one before for a long time it'll
be interesting yes that sounds awesome is it g n a x l i don't know it's upside down uh 12 ply um 25
no that's not the number oh eighteen eight
oh there's a ladder here too i got a rear tire and a 9870 that's got a big piece of metal in
the tread but when we wiggle it around it leaks air so i i think i gotta um maybe either fix it
or put a new one on then what size is that tire one eight four twenty six does that sound right no
it's a it's a traction tread it's a rear tire i'm gonna have Kate hold my phone so it doesn't lose
reception and then i'll go down and look hello are you still there okay it will just be one moment
i'm Mark's daughter Kate nice to meet you oh is it well hello again you know me then 18 4
dash 26. oh okay no ask him what ply rating what ply rating 12. okay
all right okay all right we only get reception on the very very top of the combine okay where
are you at on the top of the combine and then you take a left and then you take another left
at the next time you can take a left one moment until the road turns north my dad's coming up
here you go can you hear me this is not a good scenario at all yikes we're gonna have to probably
replace this tire it's still got really good tread on it too which is not good because tires
for combines are super expensive we also have the disc at the field and the water truck and the fuel
pickup right here that's my combine right there here's the middle one that Arvid's going to learn
how to drive there's my dad's so this is kind of what a harvest morning routine would look like we
have to fuel blow out the filters take a general check over the combine to make sure there's not
a massive piece of metal in the wheel things like that have you blown out filters
you'd have to be going super fast to plug anything up in this year yeah yeah i've come to the pickup
to pick up my two Kate's Ag tote bags right here and put them in my combine as well as my
water jug you have to carry a lot of water with you on the combine because it's very important to
stay hydrated hi Steve good thank you how are you dad has a big metal piece of metal in his wheel
yeah so we're gonna in the back right wheel you'll have to check it out it's the far combine back
right tire it's pretty crazy i'm just getting in my combine now to start it up so let's see
good my dad's in the combine with Arvid gonna turn the heat down a little bit
because it's warm out i have this back rest because your back can get very sore driving
combine so now i'll put my steering wheel down i'm just going to raise my header really quickly and
wait until my dad's ready to go the combine does need a few minutes to warm up so
i'll just wait for that right now my dad's probably explaining what the buttons do
and kind of the whole panel here just to get Arvid kind of familiar with them before the combine's in
action it's a lot easier to already have an idea of what all of this is about before you start
trying to apply it i have my Kate's Ag shirt on again today i absolutely love it the cotton is
very nice and of course it's grown and sewn in the USA and you're able to track where it came
from and the people you supported when purchasing the shirt which was so important to me so it looks
like my dad's getting ready to go i also have my Kate's Ag tote bag here in the cab with me Kate
are you running yes okay we'll we'll just start cruising towards the field you just follow me okay
all right sounds good thank you now my dad's going through the motions of lifting and lowering the
header we are cutting with a 16 foot pickup header and basically what this is for is when you swath
the wheat into windrows you're able to just pick it up from the swaths a lot of times you'll see
combine headers with 40 foot or 35 foot really big headers with teeth that move back and forth like
this and then that just eliminates the swathing process so you're directly cutting the wheat
from the field both are used for wheat and the same crops but a lot of times and we also have
both of those headers for our combines a lot of times we choose to swath because of a bug called
sawfly that burrows into the wheat and makes it fall over and when you're picking up with the
straight cutting header you can't go all the way on the ground and dig up dirt and rocks into your
header trying to get this wheat up and you lose a high percentage of your crop so if you're able to
swath it before it falls down then you don't lose that crop we still straight cut barley and spring
wheat usually but for the most part we swath all of our winter wheat and there really is no remedy
for saw flies yet the only thing that has been developed is a solid stem variety of wheat but the
solid stem variety still falls down so it's best just to swath for now i'll rev my combine up and
follow dad out to the field gosh my dad's going really slowly maybe just so he can teach i like
to drive fast in the fields though it's a bit of a problem we cut all of this field yesterday so now
we're moving on to the far corner of this field which we'll probably be working on until noon
and then we'll move to another field i think it's going to take many many years to get out to this
field at this speed we are driving six miles per hour i think that beep was just because i
pressed the check mark on the two air buttons i got on my little screen here which is called
a command center and it has all of these little buttons that change between screens
i don't know what a lot of them mean if you would like to purchase a Kate's Ag grown and
made in the USA shirt you can visit my website katesag.com that's k-a-t-e-s-a-g-dot-com
i have both men's and women's i think now my dad's going full speed oh there's antelope
running away from the field over there oh and we still we're almost done with this
part of the field but we still have this half my uncle swathed them in 80 acre pieces so that
we wouldn't get full on the wrong side of the field because we don't have a grain cart
so we had an 80 piece and 80 which makes 160 and then an 80 and an 80 so four
sections in this field which makes a 320 acres so the way land is divided up in Montana is it all
everything starts with a section and a section is 640 acres so some of our fields are a full section
but some are half sections 320 acres or some are quarter sections 160 acres but
everything we go by is by sections this is a half section a quarter section that's a quarter over
there that's a half things like that so when you hear those types of terms that's what they mean
my dad is now just stopped in front of his row explaining things to Arvid about
how to start the combine that you want it idled down before you put the back and the header in and
then you want to idle it back up and just giving a lesson so i'll start my row here pretty soon
i'll just line up a bit more i'll actually probably just wait until he starts his next row
because this is such a short row here it's not even really worth it so i'll idle my machine
down put the back in put the front in rev it back up put my header down oh it looks like is my dad
still driving yes i think he is it usually takes a good day or a couple days to do combine lessons
but because Arvid's already familiar with farming and combines he'll probably just take a couple
laps or a day these combines are very expensive and also super big you want to be safe with them
and make sure you're operating them properly and you also don't want to break them my dad's taking
his next row right now because we're getting to the end part of this field there are no
more side rows so i'll just start on east headed row now my dad's got the auger of the combine out
i thought that's so funny because we don't have a grain cart oh now he's putting it back
in now Arvid and my dad have stopped to switched seats which is kind of cool i know he'll do well
and my combine is slowly moving backwards so i've gotta put it a little bit forward
past its neutral position to stay here just past dad and Arvid load up Kate get going
i know i was just just give me a second now i'm going to dump in the truck
so i'm lining up to Wahl right now and i'm unloading my grain do you want me to wait
or go into the next part of the field just wait Kate until I get here wonder when my
dad's pickup door's open my dad's doing his movements like this with the combine i wonder
if he's going to put his auger back in so now we're starting this next 80 acre piece and
we're driving over there now i wasn't completely sure where we were going to start
i maybe thought on the other end but it looks like in this middle part here it's 11:17 right now
so we should finish this other 80 acres hopefully soon we've only got the two combines running Dad's
is broken down we have our tire guy coming out to take a look at it and see if it's something
that we can fix or if we'll just have to get a complete new tire my dad was telling me this
morning he just wants to get done with this field because of how bad it is my next row will be the
second one to his i was just going to drive over both of these wheat swaths but i don't really
need to do that so i'll just go around the first one i may have to drive over the second one but
i can just kind of probably squeeze in there so that's what i'll try and do we do want to
conserve as much of the wheat crop as we can because there's not much of it here i mean
this field in total is probably averaging around six bushels maybe ten so i'm just
starting slowly kind of turning my combine and then picking up the row straight eventually i'm
definitely really tired this morning because we did have a late night finishing in the field
field but i think after the third day passes your body kind of adjusts to the new routine
and it's just hardest to stay awake in the cab for the first three days i found in my past harvests
my dad just stopped the combine and got out so i'm not sure if something's going on with it