By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
A local farmer brought in a remarkable crop of wheat last week. Logandale resident Bryant Robison harvested his field of a little more than 2 acres last week and brought in an estimated 4 tons of grain.
Robison got some considerable help in the project from local resident Scott Whipple. Whipple brought over his big John Deere combine, with its 15-foot grain-harvesting head, to bring in the crop.
The combine had little trouble cutting through the thick growth of the hard white wheat variety that Robison had planted. It quickly gathered the grain into a huge onboard grain tank, leaving a plume of dusty chaff in its wake.
When the field was all cut, Whipple drove the combine to a grain cart parked at the south end of the field and unloaded the wheat into the trailer through an overhead grain chute.
The whole process took about 20 minutes.
According to the John Deere website, a model 9610 combine harvester like the one Whipple owns is able to average about 10 acres per hour fairly easily. But Whipple said that the smallness of the field may have slowed him down just a bit.
The dense thickness of the stand of grain was definitely also a factor, he said. “There were a few spots where I had to slow down to around 2 mph because it was so thick and heavy,” Whipple said.
The machine is capable of harvesting at about 6.8 mph wide open in 2nd gear, according to John Deere.
Robison said that the wheat crop was just an experiment for him. At the age of 90, he has been farming in the Moapa Valley nearly all of his life. His family came to the valley and began farming in 1909.
Even so, Robison said that it has been a very long time since he had grown any wheat here. “It has probably been about 50 years,” Robison said. “I did it this year as a learning experience. It was purely an experiment.”
All the same, Robison said he was pleased with his harvest. With the estimated 4 tons from the field, that would put the yield on the crop at around 50-55 bushels of wheat per acre. According to the USDA, the average wheat yield in the United States is at around 40-45 bushels per acre.
Robison planted the field back in November using his own equipment. He fertilized it right after planting. Then he raised the crop on only winter irrigation water shares as well as the significant rain water that has occurred over this past winter. He said that he only irrigated the field three times with the final watering about a month ago when the field was still in its “soft stage.”
Robison reported that there were only moderate problems with weeds. He only did a little bit of spot spraying where weeds came up. “The wheat pretty much outgrew everything,” he said.
There wasn’t much problem with bugs or other pests on the crop either. “We were lucky, we didn’t get the numbers of grasshoppers that came up in other areas of the valley,” Robison said. “Some areas closer to the desert areas have had grasshoppers come in and wipe out everything. But we didn’t get that.”
