August 15

View of the day-Finally a day of cutting where we actually get to use the lights!

Yes, it's true...we finally finished the barley...woo hoo!

We got the tractor and grain cart from the hospital, and the bill was quite reasonable, relatively speaking. Al moved it out to the wheat field north of Robinson, while Marilyn did another sample on the barley and took it into the Tuttle elevator to get the depressing news that it was 16% moisture. After picking up Al at the grain cart, we came back to the camper to kill a couple of hours.

We needed to replace the rubber skirt on the back of the combine that keeps the chaff off the axles. The old one had a couple of large holes worn in in, so we decided to revamp the pickup belt we took of the header to use in it's place. Of course, there were 1/4 inch square holes evenly spaced where the pickup teeth were attached. We had picked up some rivets and washers to fill the holes without leaving anything sticking out to catch the straw. The washers didn't have a small enough holes, and there wasn't a hardware store in town to pick up what we needed, so we drilled the right size holes in a roll of pennies and they worked perfectly. They are underneath the skirt, so we won't get thrown in the slammer for defacing currency...but who will know?

After the fixit job, we went out and cut another test and hot damn, it was 13.7% and good to go. We finished it up around 8pm, Marilyn took the straight header off and started down the highway to the field at Robinson. Once Al finished filling the bin, he went back to the field and brought the pickup truck and header over to the wheat field. We cut a hopper, it was surprisingly low in moisture, but with the sun down it was only going to go up, so we called it a night.

Finally a good day...