June 8, 2011

View of the day-Repair job complete.
Al was up at the crack of dawn and on his way to Pratt to pick up the coupler that we needed to fix the header. Marilyn stayed back at the camper and got things ready to go once we were able to get started back in the field.

Al was able to stop for coffee with Lee Petersen, a fellow Canadian harvester who had just moved up to Pratt. Lee was on his way back to Canada to do some more seeding while his crew waited on some wheat around Pratt. Once Al got the part he was back in Cherokee by 10:30 and they went to work getting everything back together.

There was a bit of tweaking to do to get things lined up properly, but before long they had it assembled and tested for quality assurance so we were good to go. Al moved the combine out to the field and rode around for a couple of rounds to make sure everything was going to work as it should. Franklin, one of the farmers showed up and helped Al move the cart and pickup to the next field about 7 miles SE of where we were.

Marilyn got the field finished, then Al took the load to Alva while she moved to the next field and started in on it. It was another 106º day with a brutal south wind…again…that made picking up the swaths going north quite the task once the sun went down…you could hardly see the swath in the white out from the dust and chaff.

There were weather warnings to the north of us as the clouds moved in just before sunset and by the time we quit the lightning was flashing. Just as we parked the combine to fuel it, the wind switched to come out of the north and by the time we got back to Cherokee, the nasty stuff had moved NE leaving us unscathed.

The header worked like a charm on the 120 acres we did today…