Farm Life in the Fall

Harvest brings a familiar pattern with new challenges each day

By Amy Nelson

Welcome to the new Fresh Picked column! Over the next four issues of Fresh Pickings magazine, I will be sharing my seasonal perspective from our family farm. I am a fifth-generation farmer near Davenport. I grow soybeans and corn, and run a beef cow/calf operation.

Amy Nelson is a fifth-generation farmer who grows soybeans and corn and raises cattle. She is an active member of CommonGround Iowa, the Scott County Farm Bureau Board and the Iowa Soybean Association. She lives near Davenport with her husband Randy and children Jakob and Courtney.

Photo by Joseph L. Murphy

I love to share farm life with people who may not be directly connected with agriculture. I feel like I can relate because for the first 10 years of my post-college career, I worked for a nonprofit in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs.

When I was invited to come back to help run the farm, I knew it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. It allowed us to continue our family’s multigenerational farming operation, and the rural neighborhood offered the feeling of space and community I wanted for my children.

When making the transition, it was immediately obvious that farming is anything but a regular nine-to-five job. There is no typical day. There are general patterns that flow with the seasons, but each day always presents new challenges, many unexpected.

Farming today also isn’t the same as my father’s or grandfather’s generation. Tools, technology and a global marketplace impact me daily, whereas earlier generations relied on the local weather and noon news markets to make the best decisions for tomorrow.

But, like generations before me, I find immense satisfaction in running my own business. Knowing that by working hard and working smart, I really can see the results of my labor. I can see the plants and animals thrive with my care, which in turn, allows my family to thrive.

Fall was my father’s favorite time of year. He saw it as the opportunity to see the rewards of his hard work culminate … and to drive the really big tractors! For me, fall feels more like a freight train. There’s so much work that goes into harvesting crops, and each task is dependent on the weather, which is completely out of our control.

Beyond trying to figure out our harvest schedule, my children are adapting to a new school year. Fall is the time of year that having my mom close by is invaluable. While I am away working all waking hours, she takes over my mom duties of transporting kids, grocery shopping and running errands. We often joke that my mom and I are interchangeable this time of year – you never know who you might get for any specific job or task!

During harvest, we work from dawn until dusk and sometimes beyond. I will get up early, pack my lunch and then head out to do livestock chores. Meanwhile, my mechanic does the daily inspections and servicing of the combine, carts, tractors and semi-trucks.

On my farm, harvesting soybeans is a two-person operation. One in the combine and one in the semi-truck, which keeps us moving as efficiently as possible. When we are harvesting corn, we need to enlist more help because there are so many more bushels per acre of corn than soybeans. For easy math, it’s around 200 bushels of corn per acre and 50 bushels of soybeans per acre (an acre is about the size of a football field).

My favorite job during harvest is running the combine. The engineering that goes into it is amazing and the climate-controlled cab is a nice perk, too! I also like running the grain dryer, which is crucial for a successful harvest. Corn coming out of the field needs to be dried to a narrow moisture range to ensure good storage until I’m ready to sell. Then, it will move down the Mississippi River on barges next July.

Beyond the physical labor, a big part of harvest is problem-solving. We rely on large equipment that is cleaned, fixed and “tucked in” at the end of each season, but inevitably something breaks. The technology in modern farm equipment is amazing, but troubleshooting issues in the elements is difficult. There are also supply chain considerations. For example, we use liquid propane in the grain dryers – the same kind you may use to heat your house – but can run into supply shortages when it’s needed most.

Harvest is a puzzle, and there is no exact picture on the box to use as a guide. At the end of the day, it’s about getting all the pieces together until you get the grain harvested and understanding that the puzzle will look different for each farmer every year.

I look forward to sharing my farm life experiences with you through the seasons in the coming year. If you want to get in touch, feel free to send a note to iowafoodandfamily.com/contact.