“EVERY NEW BEGINNING COMES FROM SOME OTHER BEGINNINGS END”
Seneca
This time of year would be appropriately called ‘The moon of madness’. In Kansas it is wheat harvest time. It is the time when motorists are asked to please be careful and give all the farmers and equipment extra patience. It was always a time that I loved especially when I was allowed to run the combine. It was a yearly ritual when I had the urge to buy a combine of my own. I happily announced to the family that I have lost the urge. Not only would I not be able to climb into a combine, but I would not even know how to start one now.
One of my regrets is that I never went on the harvest. I would have loved one season going from Texas to Canada on the harvest. It was and is a grueling job even with the new clean and comfortable cabs. There is so much more than the classic running of the combine through a pristine field of wheat.
I happened onto a You Tube channel and discovered Zeorian Harvesting & Trucking. When I watched day one of the 2021 harvest I kept expecting to see many machines and trucks being loaded for the journey south. Home for Jim and Tracy is in Nebraska. Tracy is the grand-daughter of a custom cutter that started hauling four Massey Harris machines on the run every year. Jim worked for Tracy’s grandfather when he was eighteen. Not hearing the story yet I assume that that is how he met Tracy. Until recently the couples children came on the harvest growing up in the business. Zeorian is gone on the harvest for one hundred days every year.
What surprised me was that Zeorian Harvesting is a one machine operation and Jim and Tracy do it all themselves. But the big yellow New Holland combine can cut three times as much wheat as I did running the old 403 International or the 4400 John Deere that used to run.
It is very interesting to watch the videos as the couple drives through places that I know. They came through Ellsworth, St. John, Pratt, Sawyer, Medicine Lodge (where they park their camper), unload at Sharon, go through Nashville, Kingman, Hutchinson, and Marysville on their way back home to get the second load of equipment. They were cutting off of the Ridge Road while here. I was sorry that I did not get to go meet them. They have now moved north of Chase and I plan on watching them through the rest of the season and into the corn harvest.
New Holland is sponsoring their You Tube channel and the Kiowa County Media Center has them all wired up to produce video.
I can watch long lines of machines doing the traditional custom cutting if I want, but I like Jim because he is old school and is coping with this new world of technology. He still enjoys actually driving the combine and does not let a computer do it.
GOOD LUCK JIM AND TRACY on a successful 2021 harvest run.
