The Little Town With Two Big Elevators

Hunter, Oklahoma, is just a small little town, of maybe 300 people. It's north and east of Enid. Go check your map. It MIGHT be on there. We started this job cutting for a guy named John Miekel who died just a few years after we started cutting for him. He was an excellent man to work for, and his wife remained a close family friend until her death a couple years ago. At one time, the land was leased out to a fellow by the name of Leland Unruh. Unfortunately he died quite suddenly a few years ago too as a result of cancer. Now the ground is leased out to Dean Schultz. We park our campers on a little piece of ground right next to one of the wheat fields where we have electricity, good water, and a septic tank, the size of a cow pasture.

Saturday, June 9, 2001

We arrived at Hunter early afternoon. What the heck, there is no wheat to cut! Well Dean Schultz the farmer we cut for at Hunter had told me that he had to destroy the 700 acres that we usually cut for him at Hunter because of very low yield. He had it insured so it was the right thing to do. He also said that he would let me cut some of his wheat in the Pond Creek area just north of Hunter about 15 miles but it wouldn’t be ready till Monday.

 Well I hate to sit around when others are cutting so I went to visit my long time friend Kathy Marsh the manager of the elevator in Hunter. When I walked in the door she said, “Keith one of the local farmers has some wheat to cut and no one to cut it. It’s not much, but here is his telephone number if you want it.” I called him and got the directions to the field and other details and told him, “ We would have to unload the combines and everything but we could be there in about 2 hours”. He said, “I’ll meet you at the field in two hours”. And my crew thought they were going to have this Saturday afternoon off.

 I have always said that it is important for any harvester to have a least one good friend in every community they work in other then the farmers they harvest for. Kathy Marsh has referred several farmers to me over the years and her father, Marvin Nelson, did the same for me many times when he was manager of the same elevator.

 So we cut that one small job at Hunter and on Monday moved the combines the 15 miles to the Pond Creek Jefferson area. The wheat we cut in that area averaged 58 bu. Per acre and tested 61 to 62.

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