July 16, 2008

View of the day-We're finally combining and Al is pretty happy that we have some help with the hauling thanks to the farmer bringing in a couple of semis.

We were able to get the rest of the list accomplished and after a quick lunch moved the combine out to the field to do a test. We waited at the camper for the farmer to call back from the elevator in Winner with the moisture. It was 11.8%, so back to the field we went to get back to combining...something we hadn't done since July 4th...a lot of days off.

The farmer wanted to haul north to Reliance instead of Winner so he called a neighbor who had a couple of semis to haul a few loads in for him...something which made Al extremely happy. He's allergic to South Dakota it seems...his blood pressure rises every time he sees a motor carrier car. It's bad enough that you have to drive so far to get to an elevator, but when you can only haul 420 bushels in a truck that normally carries 600, productivity goes out the door...and let's not think about the extra fuel that gets burned on all the additional trips.

We finished one little patch, leaving a couple of green strips...there was a lot of that around the perimeter. Moisture went from a low of 11% to a high of 21%, but it blended off into an average of 12.5%. The yield is looking good again, running around 50 bu/ac...just too bad that we caught up with the dry stuff.

We were going to move to another field, but because it is down a two-track-trail, we didn't want to take any chanced of getting rained in and not being able to move anywhere else if it was too wet. The semi drivers didn't want that either, so we called it a night.

The clouds were starting to bubble up and there were storm warnings for surrounding counties, but most of the bad stuff missed us...so far. We are still in the running for more weather over the next couple of days...maybe we will get lucky.

Laundry day tomorrow...