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Dawn to dusk: It's sorghum harvest

Catch a glimpse of sorghum harvest from the rising sun to its sunset on the Texas horizon.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

October 18, 2024

24 Slides
sorghum harvest
Combining sorghum as the Texas sun begins to drop below the western horizon. Shelley E. Huguley

Harvest is underway on the Huguley farm. We started with black-eyed peas and then headed to the sorghum fields. My farmer and a lifelong friend and fellow farmer, Leonard Lawson, are helping each other harvest this season. Our son has also returned from college to make a few rounds on the combine.

No matter who is behind the wheel, there's nowhere I'd rather be than in the field, photographing every step. What a privilege to stand in my farmer's fields and watch him finish what he started.

It's been another tough year. Late-season drought and extreme temperatures took a toll. On many of our farms, rather than planting 120 or 60 acres, my farmer has resorted to planting 30-acre blocks of black-eyes and sorghum (grain or forage), so he can stagger the watering. The other acres are fallow with a wheat cover. The water table continues to drop, pressing area producers to become more creative on less acres. How to produce more with less is an endless conversation in his mind, and he's already extremely efficient.

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We keep praying and asking the Lord for wisdom. In the meantime, we'll finish what we started in fields backlit by a harvest moon. Thankful for the harvest. Blessings on yours!

Grab a cup of coffee, watch the sun rise above the horizon in the east, and begin to sink in the west. It's harvest, y'all!

Related:Southwest sorghum rated good to excellent

Learn more about the Southwest sorghum crop in these recent Farm Press articles:

About the Author

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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