Just for something completely different - we're just starting harvest here in Western Australia. This video is from a large wheat/barley/canola farm in the Eastern Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, it's poles apart from your U.S. harvest.
Look up "Cascade, Western Australia" on your maps to see where he's located.
This year has been a total disappointment with a very poor level of rainfall right throughout much of the State. Some of the marginal Northern and Eastern-most farms will not even break even this year.
As a guide, the State produces around 20 million tonnes of grain in total (1 tonne - 2,204lbs). The last 4 years have been bumper years, with the 2022 crop being a State record, ending up with 25 million tonnes of grain produced for the year.
This year, the total is forecast to barely reach 15 million tonnes, and that is quite a bit below the average.
The farm this guy is operating on is probably around 15,000 to 20,000 hectares (1 hectare = 2.471 acres), and this is a common size farming operation in the Eastern and Northern broadacre farming areas of W.A.
You'll see the road train picking up the grain to haul it to the local grain collection centre (called "the bin" here). We use only end-tippers (end-dumps), no belly dumpers here, the end-tippers are more versatile.
You can calculate the gross load of the triple road train, we can get 16.5 tonnes (36,366lbs) on a tandem, and 20 tonnes (44,080lbs) on a tri-axle.
Airbags are popular, the authorities give you higher axle loadings for airbags here, they say they damage the roads less than steel springs.
You'll hear him talk about paddocks - that's fields to you guys in the U.S. and U.K. and Canada.
You'll also hear him talk about "utes" - that's "utility" vehicle here, or pickup as you know them in the U.S.
Auto-steer is nothing short of an amazing invention, it never existed when I farmed 40 years ago, but these young guys talk about how it's been around all their lives!
You'll notice the fire truck features big in our harvesting operations. Fires are quite frequent, usually starting from a seized bearing, and they have to be tackled promptly.
He's talking about the day being 37° - that's 37°C, about 98°F. We have days of extremely high fire danger (usually when it gets over about 40°C with a strong, hot Northerly wind) - and those days are declared "fire-ban" days.
On fire-ban days, everything stops in the paddocks, no-one is allowed into any paddock with any machinery or vehicles. This is to stop fires that might become uncontrollable otherwise.
The "seed terminators" on the rear of the harvesters crush and spread the weed seeds and straw to ensure that the weed seed bank is reduced, so a reduced level of weed spraying is the aim for the following year.
All the field silos are portable with fold-down wheels, so they can be transported from paddock to paddock with a vehicle or tractor, as required (only when empty, of course).
The chaser bins are all locally made, all the tractors and harvesters are fully imported from the U.S.
