July 30, 2008

View of the day-Marilyn making the rounds on some 65 bu/ac wheat near Gettysburg, SD.

Boy, is there ever action around here! It's almost like Oklahoma...combines everywhere, trucks that look like they are in a convoy...a steady stream to and from town...harvest is in full swing here.

Al went out early with the shop trailer to blow the dust out of the rad, air filter and to service the combine. Once he got all that out of the way, he came back into town to pick Marilyn up so they could get started before lunch.

Both machines were cutting up a storm, with the crop yielding so high, it was only a matter of time before we had everything full and had to wait...only a short while. Everything was getting hauled to the bins on the outskirts of town, and the farmer was hauling with both his tandem trucks while Al ran the cart. Al did run one of the trucks into the bin when we were backed up, but then we got back into the rhythm after the John Deere took a break and we were able to catch up.

Marilyn went to dump in the grain cart which was parked at the end of the field and noticed the JD was parked near it with smoke coming out of the engine compartment. After stopping and giving them our fire extinguisher, they were able to stop the smoldering and clean out the chaff that had collected near the manifold that had started the incident.

We were combining right along the intersection of the two major highways and the harvesting traffic was unbelievable. Most of the winter wheat fields are now cut on the way into town, and there are all colors of machines...the Masseys from the other day, New Hollands across the road, CaseIH and John Deere...as Al likes to say..."This is ACTION!"

We finished the field we were on and moved north a few miles to start in on another one. The bin was full, so we just filled the cart, since the trucks were still at the other field waiting to get dumped.

The weather was threatening for most of the day...storm warnings all afternoon, and those big thunderheads to the north and south. They stayed away from us and we had a pretty productive day...100 acres for our machine. It didn't sound so good up in North Dakota. Al had a call from our farmer in Tuttle, ND...they will be starting barley next week...we just started here.

Surely we won't be shut out in ND this year...