We Took A Break From Harvest | Peterson Family Farm

Well our spring cow group is still all black but our fall cow group now has quite a bit of color in it. There's a few white faces in here, like three. We are going to preg check today. That's supposed to be here in less than 30 minutes so we're making sure they're out of the pen and ready. Meet the Peterson family. Our dad, the three Peterson brothers, and our families farm together in central Kansas. Our family farm started in 1882 and has been raising cattle and crops ever since. Please subscribe to this channel and give us a like and a comment if you enjoy the video. We had one cow we're going to cull so dad took the ones put back in the pen. This one I'm going to put in the heifer pen. We had a 96 percent breed up rate on the cows but on the heifers that if they they just had their first calf so they're becoming three-year-olds we only had a 75 percent breed up. Well there was only four of them so there was one open but that's 25 percent of that age. So I'm gonna run that young one with the fall group and get it bred so it'll be moved back six months but we'll keep it around. So we'll let that cow gain some weight. These calves were a little slower to be satisfied after weaning this year compared to normal but by day three they were slucking their bunk and they're up to like 18 pounds a day now. Well we were supposed to start kind of between 10 45 and 11 but we got chores done a little early. I called the vet he could come early so we finished. I finished pregging them and feeding them before the time we were going to start so I get to go bale now. All right Friday morning back at it. Mom and I have been hauling in some semi-loads this morning. Everything's hauled in now. I'm about to hop in this other combine. Got a wedding at my place this weekend so I was doing some of that this morning too. Well this part of the field got eaten alive by chinch bugs so not very good. Still got to cut it. That part of the field did actually pretty good so it's going to average out. All right this field is finished up. Head to the next. These moths have been terrible this year. I don't know if you can see them swarming around me but they're on my face crawling on my shirt. All right we're doing something kind of funny. We had the corn head over here from corn harvest and we just kind of left it in the field but we're gonna take it with us on our way to the next milo field so that we have it for one more corn field that we've got for the neighbor. A double crop corn field. Hey look a combine with the corn head. Wait a second. Made 76 bales in basically like an hour and a half. Changed the net wrap but I can't grease because all the grease gun stuff's with the combine so I guess I'm relegated to the hand one. Side by side. This is heavy stuff. All right dad's on empty so I'm backing the fuel trailer up to him. Well gonna be a while till I can find these to count them again. They're way spread out on these 73 acres. I didn't have time to get a fence really to rotationally graze it but I did I do have my paths done so that I can drive it. Happy cattle on new forage. Last night we uh we made it to our later planted milo. It's also um a different variety. Probably a few days longer. Anyways it it's not dry yet which is fine. We'll probably end up trying the beans again this afternoon. We're gonna try to get the the wheat drilling started. Try to get fertilizer. It is Saturday but they should be there and be able to hammer that out next week as well as hopefully finish the full season beans. Okay I'm over at baling. A lot of bales. That's them. That's over there. The dog are out cutting beans. They about have a truck ready for me to take so. I am gonna do a few more bales here. Um once that is once I get to the end of this pass right there in the middle I'm gonna go get that truck. Well the pivot corners are a little green but the out in the middle is dry. It's like nine percent beans basically out there the driest parts. They got this semi loaded and ready for me. Waiting on trucks. Uh people must have some yield out there. There's a lot of corn trucks in here. This is the line for beans I think. All right these beans have dried down a lot since uh what was it Thursday or Wednesday. This is a different field than where we had got into some wet ones but this is our big field that was supposed to be irrigated. We did pump a little on that half and there's still a little green. It's a nice nice laying field. This is also where it was half a cover crop and half not. Side without a cover crop is doing awfully good. Like I've been saying it you feel that difference in the 10 inches of rain we're supposed to get and we didn't. I don't know if you could hear Greg on the radio but he was mowing for his wedding venue this morning and lost his phone and he doesn't know if he ran over it or what but he couldn't find it anywhere. So he says I'm in charge of vlogging. Rough day for Greg. No phone. Well uh Greg took that load and I was back in time with this with the sterling in order to get both of their dumps. They're both pretty full. Right. Then that means the sterling will be we're two-thirds full. So the combines are definitely keeping the trucks busy today. Okay I made it over to run the pivot. So this pivot didn't do a whole lot of watering of these beans but it seems to have made a difference. They say they're pretty good. Okay just finished unloading which technically I'm loading. He's unloading but um I'll wait here for my dad coming around the corner somewhere back there. Well it's Monday morning and I'm hauling a load of soybeans into the elevator that we cut on Saturday night. Ran out of dry soybeans to cut on Saturday. Also I hope Nathan and Kendall vlog because I lost my phone for a good portion of Saturday. Could not find it anywhere. Eventually found it. I'd been mowing the lawn that morning at home and had lost it and the battery was died and so we finally found it. So I'm back in business today but that was a nice phone fast for me on Saturday. Honestly though probably more stressful than it was relaxing because you know during harvest you just use your cell phone all the time. It's it's hard to to not have your phone. I did have our Midland radios so I could communicate with with dad and my brothers but with anybody else wasn't able to do so. So that was kind of stressful but I'm glad to have my phone back. Hopefully do some more filming for you today and like I said hopefully Nathan and Kendall film for you on Saturday. Well Greg found his phone uh Saturday night so that's good but I did not vlog very well like I was supposed to. Kendall might have vlogged some more. We got basically all the dry beans cut. Now we will be uh focusing on wheat. We cut like half a semi load so we're gonna try to fill one more semi over on this uh home place field but then the rest are just gonna have to wait. They were like 18-20 percent. The beans did some weird things this year. Some dried up really early and then uh some kind of got delayed and then when it rained in August they kind of are staying green longer but hopefully that means they're gonna yield more than they would have. Although like the best yielding beans I think we've basically cut all of now. Dad's pulling up the first trailer of seed wheat. We're gonna get the drill loaded and hopefully get it running this morning and hopefully keep it running for pretty long hours um the next few days. We got a lot of ground uh that's open and ready to cover. It's definitely time to focus on that. There's lots of wheat around that's already up even. The triticale I drilled um last week whenever or whatever day that was um it's it's up and looks good. It's been pretty hot so it hardly feels like wheat drilling weather but now like this morning it's cool again and the forecast doesn't have I don't think any 90 degree days so feels more like wheat drilling weather. This is the uh our GPS globe from our planter tractor. We paid for a higher accuracy um subscription for this globe this spring and we got a whole year subscription so I am going to switch it with the drill tractor we're not really using it on this tractor right now. We might like spread some manure or something but we don't need high accuracy for that so I'm gonna switch it with the drill so then we get better accuracy while we're drilling this fall. Basically our other ones are just on wasp and this is like sub probably six inch accuracy well maybe sub four inch accuracy. The wasp is like well it's accurate pass to pass but like if you stop over lunch or stop for a day and come back it might be off like even a couple feet. You usually can notice it and just nudge it over it's worked really good for a long time for us but this will be even more accurate. Sorting some cattle today instead of soybean harvest because we ran out of dry soybeans to harvest. Taking a break. Nathan's planting wheat. Starting on some wheat ground. Wash off this window but then we got some moisture still here so that's good. We got a lot of wheat ground in front of us since we've already cut so many beans. It's one thing about having an early harvest plenty of places to start drilling. All right first 55 acre field done. There goes the school bus done with that good start. Fold them up move them out. All right I switched Nathan off in the air seeder drilling wheat right here in front of the the home place farmstead here watching Kendall do his chores over there feeding the cattle. Nathan's gonna go spray I think that's him over there I'm not sure what he's doing but he's gonna go spray this evening that's why I switched him off. There's the cattle grazing over here. All right pulling into the yard to fill with some more seed and to the next field. I'm gonna drill a little after dark and then I'll probably go home at a respectable hour. There goes Greg on the night shift. I don't know how long he's planning to drill. It's not a real huge rush but I'll go in the morning. All right Tuesday morning riding with the little man. Hi Steel. Steel's helping me farm this morning. We're drilling drilling some more wheat. Second day in a row. Yesterday we got about a hundred acres done and today we've already got 40 done. We're here at the end of the morning and Brookana my wife had to take Brighton to a thing this morning and I just said hey I'm going to be sitting in the air seater all morning so I can take Steelie boy. So I got to have Steel for the morning and he's just been having a grand old time out here. We're just farming together aren't we? It's been pretty fun pretty easy. I get to just hang out with him. Got auto steered. Got nice long rows. It's been fun. Well 15 minutes later and that was the end of that literally the first series of that game it was over because you knew that Colorado could not block those four guys no matter what. Now he's capable. All right Brookana came and got Steel brought me some some pizza for lunch. Over half done with this field. I always love the view from up here on the hill you can see all the way to my house from here right to the left of that hill. That's over 12 miles away from here so it's pretty cool to look across the Smoky Valley see all the the trees and the farmland and sometimes in the middle of harvest you can look out across that view and see the dust from all the different pieces of equipment. You can see I've worked my way. I started over there and I've worked my way across here. Half the field done. Not quite. Wrapped up the field here. Folding up. Gonna go fill with seed and fertilizer for the next field. I'm getting a little roundup spray to clear up some cheat and volunteer. Mostly cheat. There's some Kansas wheat farming for you. Big old quarter of wheat. Mud road. Dirt road. Hasn't been much very often recently. We gotta get these calves out of the pen. We're gonna get their moms over there hauled off to corn stalks that dad and I just fenced yesterday. Either this afternoon or tomorrow and then these ones will get bumped into a bigger pen. They'll get split heifers and steers. They look like they've been weaned for a lot longer than they have. They've already got little guts on them. Well my dad and I are getting pretty caught up with some cattle stuff so I made it actually into the tractor for drilling wheat. Nathan needed a lunch break so I traded him off. Okay really hard to see but getting pretty low. My reflection is causing a problem there. This might be my last pass. I think I'm gonna run out before I get to the end. Okay we are unhooking the baler. I'm gonna roll some corn with the M7 and I'm gonna hook it back onto the swather. My dad hooked on the dolly to move a load of bales home before grinding. All the semis are hooked on the grain trailers as you can see. So he's just going to move some on the tractor. All right I had Brighton ride with me for a while and then Brookana brought me some dinner, supper, whatever you call it. I'm gonna finish the rest of this field and go home for the night but it'll probably be after dark by the time I get finished. I've got a couple hours left. I'm gonna enjoy this nice sunset though. So Brookana brought me some wings and some veggies and some homemade cookies. That's pretty good. Come on. Okay we got a new calf. It's one day old. I would say a few hours old. Number 507. Good job cow. Bringing the spring cows out of the pen. They're out of the great corn stalks. Spring cows on corn stalks when they have no calf is one of the best hacks of Kansas farming and ranching. They take very little maintenance and therefore less cost for several months. All right time to take the cows over to my house to graze on corn stalks. Corn stalks aren't really yellow. They're brown. Oh gold. Gold is accurate. Gold is more accurate than yellow. All right we've got them loaded. We're heading out of the pot at my house. There's dad swathing some milo stalks with the M7 and DMC. Since we cut the milo so green this year we're gonna hay some of it. Some years we'll chop it for silage the milo stubble but we have got plenty of silage this year and we're a little short on hay so we're gonna hay it and it'll be some good feed for the cattle and that's one of the advantages of milo is that it's it's got plenty of residue after you harvest the heads. Similar to corn but in this case the the stubble is actually still green and so it makes pretty good feed that way. All right we made it over to my house. We got the panel trailer unhooked there to unload. Nathan's backing up the pot. We've got 28 cows on here. There's two there's an upper level and then a lower level and then a front and a back compartment. So we got 10 on the top 10 on the bottom four in the front four in the back and Nathan's gonna back it up to here we're gonna let Are they going potty out the sides of the truck? Yeah it's like it's raining. Back up to the chute. You found a corn cob? We've got all the open ground here around the home place drilled. Just got our delivery of certified seed wheat. So this is what we'll drill to save back for seed in 2020 well for the 2026 crop. So we'll drill it on a piece of ground we know is clean of cheat and rye or other weeds as clean as we can. When we harvest it we get it cleaned by a seed cleaner but obviously you want as high quality of a product as possible. We also get this seed treated kind of like soybean seed kind I mean I believe it's a fungicide and an insecticide. All of the wheat we save back ourselves. We don't treat we just drill it how it is after we clean it to keep our costs down and as long as we have moisture or a lot enough population out there we feel like we get a good enough stand to put us in a good place for next year. So the seed wheat we do treat just to you know try to have the best chance for a good seed wheat crop for next year. I was feeling pretty hungry took a look around in the cab I found this snack. I don't know how long it's been in here but I don't think I'm that hungry. There's some sort of cookie and some sort of trail mix. I'm nearing the end of this field. There's a field next to the pumpkin patch so I've seen several people walking out through the pumpkins. The wheat next to the pumpkin patch. A lot of nice pumpkins out there. It's gonna take a rain to sprout this wheat. Get excited. Pray for rain. Caught in a group of uh well there's 31 heifers and the rest are steers. They're always a little jumpy when they first get off the truck because they've been handled more than ever in their life. Oh there's one red one the last two days. They're used to being out of pasture or in a pen. Maybe some of them will see you know humans to feed them and then all of a sudden they find themselves in alleyways being sorted by size then loaded onto a truck to get there sorted put in front of a ring and then sorted and put on a truck again. Now they get to just lay down calmly eat go back to their normal life. They will not go on a truck for another three months. So those ones over there they have like over a 60 day weaning so we separate off the biggest heaviest 22 steers and then this is where the pen of 31 heifers and the rest of the steers are. Another day another load of wheat. Okay we got done with the wheat after wheat. Anyways what we have left now is all the wheat after beans which is a majority of the acres. So I just started here and it looks like it's going in pretty nice. There's not plentiful moisture but it looks like we got some moisture down there. It's about an inch and a half to two inches deep is where I'm trying to put it and I think that'll come up. So that two inch rain we had at the end of these beans life cycle you know really I think helped us. I think some of the beans that stayed green longer maybe used more of that up and we might not have any moisture there but this field at down in this low part. Otherwise we'll be waiting for a rain. They say it's going to be dry for a while but I like how this looks. I like how these new coulters are working. Slicing slicing through everything. Got that GPS on point so it looks good. A bull and a cat. And I am out of fertilizer so I'm walking back to my parents house. Gonna get a ride back up to the home place. I think Kendall will actually bring down the fertilizer. Fencing. We'll move the cattle to the next paddock here. All right those 15 pair are gonna have the rest of this strip. This cross fence is still there but there's a gap in the fence down there for them to walk through. This is what they've eaten so far. Not 100% gone but I wanted to get them access to the next one before the weekend. The jury is still out on whether I get a water set up on that far end so they don't have to trail half a mile from one end to the other. It would save on a little compaction. They'd make a few less trails. It's not the highest priority in the middle of harvest but if I could get it done before the milo and beans are ready again I'd like to. Taking the heifers that are almost ready to breed. So they will see the bull in about a month. They'll be nice and fleshy and ready to breed. We are probably going to see a freeze before the bull is ready to turn out and so we'll have to adjust some things for that. They got good eating now. They like to eat this regrowth on the swathed paths first. Kind of annoying. It's nice to swath the pads so they can see the fence a little better. Ravens down there pitching hay. Got a nice set of calves in. Two colored out of 67. Turn left. Turn. Yeah that's good. Yeah she hasn't really figured out how to turn while she's going. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Steele. Happy birthday to you. In her general direction. He outgrew his other one. Thank you. Are you guys hiding? Are you in the house? Thanks for watching everyone. Check out our music videos linked in the description. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, and explore our website www.petersonfarmbrothers.com. See you guys next time.