Heil Harvesting LLC

Heil Harvesting LLC Our field is quality swathing in your field. Mark bought his first combine, a Model 60 Allis Chalmers, in 1960.

Heil Harvesting has been proudly owned and operated by the Heil family since 1974, but our harvest history begins long before that. He was just 14, and he used it while he was still in high school to custom harvest for local farmers near his family’s home in eastern Nebraska. Fast forward a few years -- Mark went to college, met and married Dianne, served in the Air Force, and then jumped into the

custom grain harvesting business after purchasing a Massey Ferguson 760 combine and some gas trucks. In 1975, Mark and Dianne added another Massey 760 and a truck and started hiring a crew of a couple young men each year. In 1977 the Heils and their business moved from Nebraska to New Mexico, and in 1982 Mark upgraded from the MF 760s, trading for two MF 860s. Over the years, he and Dianne also added children -- a total of four (Karen, Tara, Bradley and Kimberly) who grew up in the harvesting business and spent their summers on the roads and in the fields. The family and the harvesting business moved from New Mexico to Kansas in 1989. The decades since have seen the business gradually making the shift from the conventional machines to rotary models, and today Heil Harvesting runs two Case IH machines (6088 and 7088 models) along with support equipment, as well as a couple Massey 860s that operate mainly in fall crops. Son Brad and his wife, Lauren, have joined the business, as has daughter Tara, turning Mark Heil Harvesting into Heil Harvesting, LLC. In addition to operating the Case and Massey combines to harvest crops ranging from wheat, barley and corn to millet, amaranth, wildflowers and grass, we also own two MacDon swathers and offer swathing services. Heil Harvesting also occasionally rents out headers, combines and tractors. If we can help you or answer questions about your swathing or grain harvesting needs, or if you’re interested in our equipment rentals, please contact us.

The dairy wants to feed this triticale as greenchop because it is already pretty dry and no longer has sufficient moistu...
06/02/2026

The dairy wants to feed this triticale as greenchop because it is already pretty dry and no longer has sufficient moisture in the plants to correctly ensile (turn it into silage). The field was badly affected by freezing temperatures in early May. Feeding it as greenchop allows the dairy to use the feed even though it can't be made into silage.

We're doing just a little bit of this now, too! A nearby dairy asked if we'd be willing to run a couple loads of greench...
06/01/2026

We're doing just a little bit of this now, too! A nearby dairy asked if we'd be willing to run a couple loads of greenchop triticale (this is triticale that is chopped like silage would be, but then is immediately fed directly to the herd as part of the cows' daily ration, without going through the process of ensiling) every day to take care of one field of dryland triticale. It's close to our house and just takes a couple hours in the morning.

One of the items on the top of our to-do list when we got back from Oklahoma was to put a new cutterbar on the 40-foot t...
05/29/2026

One of the items on the top of our to-do list when we got back from Oklahoma was to put a new cutterbar on the 40-foot triple delivery header that we used while we were there -- the sandy soil and rocks pretty well finished off the old one. We pulled the old sickle, pulled the old guards off, put new guards on, rebuilt the sickle heads with new seals, bearings and pins, and put in a new ultra-coarse sickle. It's ready to go again!

While we're hunting work, we're still busy! There's never a shortage of tasks. We changed the oil in the drive wheels on...
05/28/2026

While we're hunting work, we're still busy! There's never a shortage of tasks. We changed the oil in the drive wheels on the two swathers that are here at home, a chore that took us to the local parts store for more of the required all-synthetic gear grease. We were encouraged to see that someone had taken one of the tags off of our "swathing wanted" poster hanging in the window. We also got four new tires for one of the service pickups that definitely was in need of four new tires.

We were entertained to see all of your opinions a few posts back about the insurance/wheat swathing situation. We had no idea a little info about why we were swathing that wheat would stir so many strong feelings!

Apparently the rules regarding what can be done with a zeroed crop vary from region to region. While we don't know what the rules are in other regions, we can assure you that what this farmer was doing with his wheat (swathing it for baling) was absolutely something he is allowed to do. There was nothing shady about it.

Can this wheat be fed to cattle? We are not cattle producers ourselves and certainly aren't bovine experts, but we know a lot of people who do not hesitate for an instant to graze wheat fields and feed baled wheat to cattle in tough times. As we understand it, beardless wheat would be preferable as feed, but bearded wheat like what we were swathing works in a pinch. Most things are better than watching your herd starve.

Would this wheat have been worth harvesting, given its condition and the current prices? Was it worth baling? That's something many of you commented on. There are so many factors that play into it: What's the price of fuel? What's the wheat market going to do? Would they be hiring custom cutters or doing it themselves? Would they sell now or sell later, and if they're selling later, do they have on-farm storage or will they have to pay elevator storage? Does the farmer own his own cattle that need the baled wheat as feed because of pasture conditions in the area? What's the cattle market going to do? If he's selling the bales, what's the status of the hay market? SO MANY QUESTIONS, and we have the answers to none of them. In the end, all that mattered was what the farmer decided to do with the crop after he settled with the insurance.

Whether to swath a crop or not is not our choice. That's the farmer's decision, and we play no role in it (with the exception of a very few times when we've started swathing a field and then advised the farmer that the field wasn't going to yield enough to be worth swathing). No matter what your opinion was about whether he should or should not have swathed the fields, or the wheat should or should not have been harvested, or whether the wheat shown even qualifies as a crop, we can guarantee you that (a) the farmer was genuinely doing his absolute best to make the right choices given the information he had and the situation he was in and (b) we certainly weren't taking advantage of him in any way. He called us.

Another thing to keep in mind is that what looks like a fair crop in one area of the country would probably qualify as a fantastic crop in another area of the country, and what looks like a fantastic crop in one area of the country would probably only be considered fair elsewhere. The often-stated opinion that this crop is a failure/is not worth $ #!@/doesn't look like a crop, etc., is just that: an opinion. The fact that a field of wheat isn't yielding, say, the projected Illinois 2026 state average of 102.8 bushels/acre certainly doesn't make that field a complete failure with no value.

We're again hunting acres! We can swath wheat, triticale and failed crops for chopping or baling in 30-foot, 40-foot, 60...
05/09/2026

We're again hunting acres! We can swath wheat, triticale and failed crops for chopping or baling in 30-foot, 40-foot, 60-foot or 80-foot windrows. Give us a call -- we'll come see what you've got, and we can talk about how we can help.

And, just like that, we're finished with our acres in central Oklahoma and are back home in Kansas. This means we're bac...
05/08/2026

And, just like that, we're finished with our acres in central Oklahoma and are back home in Kansas. This means we're back to looking for work, so if you've got some wheat that isn't going to make it and you're needing swathing services, let's talk!

If you're not servicing equipment and changing sickle sections, you're probably not really swathing. This sickle is on i...
05/07/2026

If you're not servicing equipment and changing sickle sections, you're probably not really swathing. This sickle is on its last acres and the copious rocks in the fields are not exactly doing it any favors. It's a tough balance between cutting as low as possible to get more of the wheat into the windrow and cutting high enough to keep the sickle out of the rocks. We'll be replacing the entire thing as soon as we finish here in Oklahoma.

Yes, we know the replacement section for the broken one doesn't match the rest of the sickle. We've switched over almost entirely to the MacDon ultra-coarse knife sections because we find they do an outstanding job. We like the ultra-coarse sections because, unlike the fine and coarse sections, the ultra-coarse have a self-sharpening edge. When we pull this sickle to replace it, the ultra-coarse sections will be worn down to where they're noticeably smaller than new sections would be, but they still will have razor-sharp and dangerous edges. We still have a few boxes of the fine and coarse sections around, though, and we're using them up as replacements when we do sickle repair. The coarse and fine sections that have been used as replacements will be worn down to where the teeth are nearly gone and they're basically harmless. We do sometimes end up replacing the replacements in the field because they become dull and don't cut as well as the ultra-coarse originals.

(In real time, we've finished up in Oklahoma and are back home replacing this entire cutter bar and hunting for work again. If you're considering calling to talk swathing, don't hesitate to get in touch.)

These fields are a classic example of wheat that got a rain on it after the crop insurance company declared it failed an...
05/06/2026

These fields are a classic example of wheat that got a rain on it after the crop insurance company declared it failed and wrote the farmer an insurance check. The late rain really helped this wheat a lot, and the farmer said he would have taken most of the fields we swathed to harvest instead if he hadn't already gotten the crop insurance check. However, if the field is zeroed (declared a complete loss, unprofitable to harvest as grain) and the farmer has received that insurance check, then the wheat cannot be harvested, no matter how good it is.

This is unfortunate because sometimes the weather turns around, beneficial rains come, the temperature moderates and the wheat turns out to be quite good, definitely profitable to harvest. But harvesting a wheat field for grain after it's been totaled and a crop insurance payment has been made on it is insurance fraud and can get a person in really big trouble really fast. This is why sometimes you see our swathers in wheat fields that look like they're surely way too good to swath. Sometimes they are too good to swath, but the farmer's hands are tied, and putting it in a bale is the best option remaining.

(In real time, we've finished up in Oklahoma and are back to hunting for work again. If you're considering calling to talk swathing, don't hesitate to get in touch.)

We're putting these fields in double windrows, swathing 40 feet delivered out one end of the header and then coming back...
05/05/2026

We're putting these fields in double windrows, swathing 40 feet delivered out one end of the header and then coming back through the field and laying another 40-foot swath right next to it. The baler will then either rake the two windrows together or use a wide-pickup baler to pick up both windrows at the same time. This doubles the baler's efficiency and that makes balers happy.

We're often asked if we could just lay the two light windrows on top of each other to save the need to rake or to have the wide-pickup baler. The answer to that is nope. Please believe us when we say we have tried -- we wish we could do it, too! -- but it absolutely does not work. When we lay these windrows, they drop out the end of the header, but they don't shoot out the end. In order to lay a second windrow on top of the first, about 4 feet of the cutter bar has to run directly in/over the first windrow. When you try to run your cutter bar through a windrow, all you do is push up pile after pile after pile. It's a disaster. Laying 80 feet in two side-by-side windrows is as good as it gets at this time.

(In real time, we've finished up in Oklahoma and are back to hunting for work again. If you're considering calling to talk swathing, don't hesitate to get in touch.)

And one day, we got a phone call and packed up and hauled a swather down into central Oklahoma! The phone just has not b...
05/04/2026

And one day, we got a phone call and packed up and hauled a swather down into central Oklahoma! The phone just has not been ringing, which made it even more of a delightful surprise to get to do this swathing for someone who was a custom grain harvester himself for more than 40 years. (The only downside is that we're already finished and back to hunting for work again, so if you're considering calling to talk swathing, don't hesitate. We wish we were still in the field, but we are not.)

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Ulysses, KS
67880

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+16203534236

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