Our ‘81 Combine and “RD” Truck
Our Lone Combine in the Foreground
And Dust Kicked Up by Neighbors’ Three Machines in the Field Behind
Small Combine of Frugal Neighbor
So, here we are arriving to cut our second field of wheat and across the road are custom-cutters with two gargantuan combines and a wheat bin on wheels that a huge tractor pulls alongside the combines which auger the wheat without having to stop cutting. The grain bin is then delivered to an 18-wheeler truck parked on the side of the country road, and the wheat augered into it. They started mid-day and will move on to their second wheat field and cut a good portion of it before the grain gets too damp and they have to quit just before dark.
We will be in this field for two solid days, using a lone 1981 combine and a couple of 70’s trucks. No grain wagon. The combine will have to stop cutting and deliver the grain to the trucks near the entrance to the field because the trucks would get stuck in the soft earth out in the field.
In town, we truck drivers line up to have the wheat weighed, then to dump it, then to weigh the empty truck. The 18-wheelers queue up with us old farm trucks. They probably carry five times what we have in our trucks and they have hoppers underneath to empty the wheat into the elevator. We have to use a hydraulic system that raises the bed slowly and then lowers it again.
The 18-wheelers, with the name of the farm or custom outfit professionally painted on the driver’s door, are shiny and fast. I don’t drive our truck over 35 when it is loaded with wheat and not over 40 when it’s empty. Our farm trucks are rusting and the paint has long ago worn away. Duct tape and wire and caulking are standard. The gears grind unless you double-clutch, the brakes are slow, the hydraulic knobs are temperamental, there is no radio or air conditioning – except through the hand-cranked windows and side vents. I love those side vents.
On the second day in that field, another neighbor shows up to harvest the field next to ours – with three gargantuan combines and the mobile grain bin and the 18-wheelers. In a cloud of dust, they will finish in one afternoon.
The farmers who harvest 1000 acres or 2000 acres or 3000 acres use the big, fast equipment because if they don’t, their wheat will deteriorate. Ours deteriorates too, but we are cutting 400 acres. 400 acres, with old equipment; 2000 acres with mega equipment: this is about economics.
Across the road from the first field we cut, a farmer was using a combine smaller than ours. And one truck. And no grain wagon. We always waved to each other when we passed.
It’s been frustrating, having to stop twice for half a day to make major repairs to the aging combine. At moments, driving the cranky trucks can be challenging.
There are many things about Oklahoma wheat farming that are not sustainable. But I am proud of the continued use of old machinery. Frugality is a sustainable practice.
I’m proud to arrive at the community grain elevator in the gear-grinding, rusting, duct-taped, “RD” (the “F” and “O” are missing from the silver letters on the truck’s hood.) Besides, exposed as we are, wheat chaff stuck to my sunburned arms, I feel closer to the wheat, closer to the land, closer to the dust in the air, closer to the blessed breeze, closer to my frugal neighbors.
