Western wheat harvest a once-in-a-lifetime event

ALTONA, Ill. — Tyler Main took a temporary westward detour after graduating from Illinois State University 10 years ago this month.

Main grew up on the family farm in Knox County in west-central Illinois, where corn, soybeans and livestock production are the norm. He opted to get some firsthand experience in wheat production at a scale not seen in the Prairie State.

“I spent the summer after college on the wheat harvest out west. I cut wheat basically from Memorial Day to Labor Day with a family from South Dakota. It was a great experience and they were awesome people,” he said.

The road that led Main to the summer job in the western Corn Belt began when he was admittedly “goofing off in high school.”

“My wife, who’s an ag teacher, won’t like to hear this, but I was probably goofing off in ag class while in computer lab. My buddies and I would always stumble across these farming websites and there was one on the wheat harvest out west. I always thought that would be a cool experience,” he said.

Fast-forward to his senior year at ISU in 2016.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to come home to the farm or not. I was in my apartment during college and I typed typed in ‘Case IH wheat harvest.’ It came up with the Krumbach family out of Parker, S.D.,” he said.

“I found their website and sent Blake Krumbach an email, told him a little bit about me, sent my resume and ask if he was interested. He called me and said they were looking for another guy and it was just kind of one of those things that worked out. They were phenomenal people, good Christian people and just an excellent experience.

“I drove up to South Dakota. Then we convoyed down to start wheat harvest in Oklahoma, then we went to Kansas, Nebraska and Montana to harvest wheat. We spent about a month in Montana, which was beautiful country.”

They used three Case combines to harvest the wheat and had one or two grain carts, depending on the need.

“I was in the grain cart pretty much all summer, and then in August when we got to Montana, I was able to get into a combine and I spent the rest of my time in a combine. It was great to get into a combine for a change of scenery,” Main said.

“I would highly encourage anybody to pursue that if they get the chance. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things that I probably might not ever do again. Hopefully, I will be able to catch up with them some day and see those people I worked for.”

It was a unique learning experience for the young farmer.

“I didn’t know anything about wheat, and in Montana alone we cut like seven different crops. We had winter wheat, spring wheat, lentils. I can’t name them all now, but it was a little bit of everything. So, it was very, very cool to get to participate in that and see that,” he said.

Returning Home

As the wheat harvest was wrapping up, the timing could not have been better.

“I then had the chance to come back home at the end of August, early September. I was lucky enough that they were able to find a spot for me to come back and join the operation here. I know not everybody has that chance, that opportunity, so I’m thankful for that and learned a lot,” Main said.

“It’ll be 10 years this August that I came back to the home farm.”