June 1, 2004

 

US Kansas Wheat Harvest Starts Despite Storms

 

Despite stormy weather, the Kansas wheat harvest began during the weekend, with workers cutting bushels in two south-central counties in the US.

 

Cutters were out in southern Barber and Harper counties, near the Oklahoma border.

 

"The rain was real spotty - less than what they got east of here," Caren Watts with the OK Co-op Grain Co. in Hardtner, said.

 

More than 15,000 bushels had been harvested by Sunday, when more than a dozen crews were out near Hardtner and Kiowa in Barber County.

 

The average test weight was more than 60 pounds with moisture content of 11 percent to 12 percent. To be considered top grade, wheat has to have a test weight of more than 59 pounds.

 

Alan Meyers, manager of Kiowa's grain elevator said rain Sunday kept crews in Kiowa out of the fields until early afternoon. But that was after crews cut more than 10,000 bushels Saturday.

 

Dallas Everhart, who has been part of a Norton-based custom cutting crew since 1997, said the start of the Kansas harvest is just part of his job, though he will not get much sleep for a while.

 

"Mainly that's just the farmer that gets antsy to get cutting," Everhart said. "We just go when it's ready."

 

He already has made stops in Oklahoma and Texas, although the wheat was not ready in Vernon, Texas three weeks ago, Everhart said.

 

"The crop here is ready now, and it's still not ready down there yet," he said.

 

Everhart said the wheat crop in south-central Kansas looked all right so far.

 

"For where we're cutting, it looks about like it should - much better from where we're from, up there near Norton. There, we haven't got enough moisture at all."

 

Everhart will follow the harvest to Pratt, about 50 miles north of here.

 

"We just keep moving north," Everhart said.