Acres & Assets | Thanksgiving on the Farm

As a young child in school, I remember making the hand shaped turkeys and studying the Pilgrims and native Americans.  Later in life as a farmer, Thanksgiving carried extra significance far beyond the holiday that is celebrated with much food and football.  Thanksgiving and the timeframe of late November was important for both farming and personal reasons.

The date of Thanksgiving was a target for farmers in the past who wanted to be done harvesting corn by the holiday.  Back then, planting in the spring happened later and the corn varieties used had longer maturities meaning that the grain wasn’t ready for harvest until much later in the season than current hybrids.  Corn was picked by the ear and put into cribs which was a much slower process than combining.   Late November became the normal time to complete corn harvest and the date of the holiday became the goal for every Midwestern farmer. 

Moving ahead in time, Thanksgiving remained the goal for harvest completion during the extremely tough wet harvest seasons.  During most years though, late November was the target time to not only have harvest completed, but to have fall tillage (back when we moldboard plowed) and fertilizer applications done and the equipment put away for the winter.  In the upper Midwest and Plains, the ground is freezing solid in most years stopping tillage operations by the time Thanksgiving rolls around.

Fast forward to today and farmers are equipped to complete grain harvests with incredible efficiency and speed as they farm more acres across more miles.  In fact, with today’s much higher yields and vastly larger combines, a farmer can harvest more corn in one hour than an average farmer used to harvest in a day.

Timely harvesting of crops is more profitable than a delayed harvesting timeframe.  Combining when the crop is just ready is the most profitable time as field loss is less, quality is better, and there is less chance of a downed and hard to harvest crop from high wind damage or prolonged wet weather.  Farmers and grain elevators are equipped to handle the huge daily volume of grain that can be harvested by farmers.

Getting the crop in on time also allows for additional fall work.  For certain soils, some form of fall tillage helps prepare a better seedbed for spring planting enabling the new crop to get off to a better start.  Farms that have suitable soil types and topography for applications of fertilizer in the fall can have that important and timely work completed when harvest is timely.  Also a farm might need conservation work such as terracing or waterway construction and post harvest is a good time to do the work as the ground is usually drier and more workable than in the spring plus the soils can go through the freezing and thawing of winter. 

In addition to the date of Thanksgiving being a goal for farmers to have harvest and all fall work completed, it is also a time to pause from the hectic activities and worries of the growing season that just came to an end.  Late November gives farmers a chance to catch up on paperwork, recordkeeping and a bit of rest.  Once again, farmers can take time to attend school and community events along with their families as the 24-7 pace and stress of harvest is past.

Thanksgiving, the holiday, is much more than a date on the calendar.  Despite the hardship of drought or floods that have taken their toll on farmers and ranchers in large areas of the country and the slew of challenges surrounding commodity prices and input costs, American farmers have much to be thankful for.  We live in a country that has solid land title laws that allow farm and ranchland owners to enjoy profits from their land for generations.  American farmers enjoy the best technologies and knowledge that allows them to be the most productive producers in the world.  And our free markets create the motivation for American agriculture to excel at what it does.

Thanksgiving is many things for each of us.  It has multiple facets for farmers and ranchers beyond a holiday feast and football.  We who don’t raise the food and fiber that we depend on have much to be thankful for when it comes to the productivity of America’s farmers and ranchers.  My hope is that each one of us remembers this as we enjoy the bounty of our Thanksgiving feast.