September 1, 2010

View of the day-Marilyn gets up high to work on the clamps on the auger boot.

Al had one more load of flax to take to Whitewood, so Marilyn decided to go along to give the elevator an official rating. Once Kim had the truck loaded, we were on our way once again.

It was overcast as we left Carlyle, but by the time we hit Whitewood, the skies were mostly sunny and it was actually warm out.

We got to the elevator and had to wait for a truck to finish dumping before we could get in, but that didn't take long. Once we got in a young lady came out with a bucket, sample cup...and a BROOM!

After the truck was unloaded and the scale swept, we went in, got our ticket and were on our way. This elevator rated four out of five scoop shovels.

We stopped at the CanAm truck stop for lunch, then stopped at White's Ag to find out about getting some work done on the flex head. We had ordered a reverser kit for the knife and they were going to put it on for us when it came in...and it was in, so all we had to do was bring it up to Whitewood and they would get it put together for us. No more getting out to pull straw when the knife gets plugged.

As we drove back to Carlyle, the skies got more and more overcast and by the time we started down the hill into town, it started to rain...what's new...it didn't last long, but it didn't look like it was going to be the last of the rain, either.

Al decided we should take a trip to Kisbey to put the new starter on the combine, so off we went. Al was pretty disgusted when Marilyn checked the rain gauge on the combine and it had 1.30" of rain in it...an inch more that we got at Carlyle...great.

Well, it didn't take too long to get the old starter off and get the new one on...except for the one bolt that required an extension and a swivel adapter to get to. We got the new one on then got the pickup lined up to get the auger boot refitted so it wouldn't dribble anymore. The strong winds we had driven against when we moved had given it a bit of a twist and we never did get it back on straight...until now.

Al went out to the swaths and checked them out...wishful thinking...the bad weather was rolling in from the west and it didn't look like it was going to miss us. We went back to Carlyle.

Back at the farm, we figured we might as well cross another thing off the 'to-do' list, so we went to figure out why the two way radio in the tractor had such poor range...it would hardly reach across the field. Marilyn went inside the tractor and Al took the magnetic mount antenna off the roof and passed it to her...there it was...the cable was rubbed through in two places. Marilyn cut out the two foot piece of worn cable and spliced it back together, then Al took a trip down the road to see how much range we could get. Success...well at least the three miles he decided to go...loud and clear.

That was it for the day, a lot of things marked off the list. By the time we got back to the camper, the rain had finally caught up with us and it was good to be inside for the rest of the night.

What to do tomorrow...