June 17, 2009

View of the day-Al's view in line at the elevator...hot and windy...perfect cutting weather.

Up early and ready for a 100+ acre day. There was no rain in the forecast for our area today and we took advantage of it.

We stopped for breakfast first and got to have a short visit with one of the first farmers we cut for in the area back in the "old days", he had retired and moved to southern Oklahoma. He was the one who introduced us to catfish fishing and every year we combined for him he took us out to try our luck...we did alright and ended up with some mighty fine fish fries.

Speaking of the old days, we were discussing how many years we had been coming south...20 years! That is including the first four years working for someone else before branching out on our own with Al's brother Jeff. Are we that old?? No wonder we know the roads and fields so well...where does the time go...

After Marilyn fueled and serviced, she got to cutting around 9:30am...fortunately the alarm beeping didn't start until later in the afternoon, so she had some quiet time. Ray didn't make the scene to fix it either. We finished the big field and moved over to the last 30 acres for this farmer. He wanted it split in half and the straw dropped for baling on one side...good thing there was lots of straw and the humidity was up in the evening...there would actually be something to bale.

We finished just as it was getting dark and while Al hauled the last load into the elevator, Marilyn got fuel in the slip tank for tomorrow's day of combining. This crop averaged around 35 bu/ac, some places it was as high as 55 bu/ac, not bad for a crop the frost had kicked earlier in the spring. Test weights have been down, though. Al took a picture at the elevator of the current price of wheat. Things must have slowed down a lot because Marilyn saw Al back in the field in a 1/2 hour and figured they must have put the run on him because he was back so quick. Lots of cutting got done yesterday.

Tomorrow we do the opposite of what we normally do...we are going to head south. We have some work to do around Carmen, about 20 miles straight south.

And we accomplished our 100+ acre goal...feels pretty good...