During my farming career, harvest was the one thing that required absolute dedication to the cause, the potential for lost income as a result of not having the crop off before bad weather took a significant portion of it away made us very nervous. Weather risk was always the dominant driver of every decision we made.

To see my combine stopped in the middle of the field on a perfect harvest day was the cause of lots of stress. In a sense, unless that combine was moving it felt like we were playing Russian Roulette with the weather and subsequently, our bank balance. I know that sounds extreme but whatever is not harvested on that day can be lost due to the weather overnight and every dollar of that loss is 100% lost profit.

A long, fascinating and kind of spine-chilling read of the history of the individuals who have reportedly played Russian roulette corrected one of my misconceptions about the “rules” ie: Only 1 bullet is removed from the chamber, not 5…. that changes the odds to reflect the risks we ran during harvest simply because we couldn’t keep the grain away from the combine. In my 50 years of grain harvest I could count the number of years when we did not lose crop income to inclement weather. What’s your count?

Regarding Russian Roulette: It got me thinking about why anybody would want to participate in such a risky and pointless gamble. Anyway, Wikipedia informs me that amongst those that have apparently tried it and lived to tell the tale range from Malcolm X to William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics amongst others. Go figure!

So, back to harvest: why would anyone play the farming version of Russian Roulette and risk a once a year income and not get their crop in the bin ASAP. That risk can be dramatically reduced by having your combine moving every harvestable hour. And to achieve that requires just one of the simplest and most reliable, user friendly machines available today. A Walkabout Mother Bin.