May 29, 2012

View of the day-Getting ready to move back to Cherokee before the bad weather hits.

We were out at the field, serviced and rolling by 11am.  Today was the last of the Oklahoma wheat that we had lined up and we couldn’t have timed it any better.

This field had some pretty severe terraces…something that a picture just can’t convey…so productivity was down a little, but Al had the cart spotted in just the right spot so that Marilyn didn’t have to drive across the water way to dump the combine.

The day started out with a clear sky, but by 1 pm there were little puffs of innocent looking clouds appearing…trouble brewing.  It was a couple hours later, just before we finished the field, that they had really started bunching up and building into those high top storm clouds.  Most of it was to the north and moving to the east, so we weren’t too concerned.  But anything can happen when it comes to the weather.

Marilyn drove the combine and Al brought the tractor and cart back into Cherokee, while Jim brought up the rear in his pickup.  After parking in town, we started back to the field to get the pickup, header and General with a load and bring them back to town.  We were just a few miles south of Cherokee, when Jim’s low tire alarm went off in his pickup…flat front passenger tire.

We were experts at tire changing on the highway…when we have the right tools…and this was a Chevy, so we were really out of our element.  We figured out the way to get the spare tire off…but there was no way the cable would release enough to let the tire drop down.  One gentleman pulled over to see if he could help us out and told us he had the same problem with his truck and spent the better part of an hour in the dark trying to get it disconnected.  He laid a few curses down, but it wouldn’t help and he was in a hurry, so had to leave.  He had just helped fight a fire in a field, now he had to go out in his power company job to get the power back that the fire had knocked out.

We finally got John to come out and give us a hand…still no luck getting the spare out…we ended up taking the tire into town and getting it fixed at the Coop.

John took us back out to the truck and we got the tire on and were getting ready to leave. The battery went dead from the flashers being on…so dead, in fact, that we had to use two sets of jumper cables from two different batteries.  John gave us a ride back out to the field while Jim raced home to get his truckload of seed wheat out to John’s barn to protect it from the rain that was rolling in.

Marilyn brought the header that was loaded on the high speed transport, into town and parked on the street with it, while Al got in line at the elevator.  They were so full there, that they had to load out two trucks with wheat for every one truck they brought in.  With no rail line, everything goes out by semi and they were having a hard time keeping up.  Most of the grain trucks that have been hauling in previous years have been signed on to haul for the oil companies that have sprung up all over the place.

We nicely got back to the camper and the rain started…a few short bursts of heavy rain, but nothing substantial.  We got cleaned up and had supper, then went over to John and Peggy’s to get settled up.  By the time we got home, the sky was clear…but further south and east it wasn’t as nice…5” hail reported near Oklahoma City. Yikes.

So tomorrow we load up and get at least the first load into Great Bend…and hope the weather doesn’t catch us on the way.

Done in Oklahoma for 2012…that was fast…