July 25, 2012

View of the day-Perfect timing going down the highway just as the spray plane passed over us.

With all the noise from the thunder during the night, we knew it wouldn't be an early morning...well, at least for Marilyn.  Al had business to attend to first thing in the morning, so he was long gone by 8:30am.

We tried an new place for lunch, The Dakota Maid, and they actually serve breakfast all day...Al finally got his omelet. After lunch, we went out to the farm to get the combine and header cleaned off.  All that chaff, dust, heat and high humidity made for an uncomfortable  couple of hours. Marilyn spent most of her time on the combine and header, while Al did some fixing and waited for his turn with the air hose.  He was busy moving tubs around to catch any of the seeds that came out of the hopper and grain elevators, they were going to feed the chickens.

After the cleaning was done, we went out and got the grain cart and moved it to the next field.  Al was out with another one of his tubs to catch the seeds that had worked their way to the bottom of the cart travelling down the rough roads.


We called it quits for cleaning and went home to shower up before going on a parts run.  We had ordered two new bolts for the spreaders...they were on warranty...and decided to pick up some fuel and oil filters and  a bucket of oil for the oil change coming up.  We only had to go 25 miles to Bowdle and after getting our parts and checking out the town, we stopped for pizza at the fuel station/restaurant...it was pretty good, too.

On our way back home, as we checked out the corn fields, a spray plane intersected with us just at the right moment.  Marilyn wasn't quite prepared for the flyover, so this was the best she could do.

We stopped at Java to get fuel in the slip tank and got there just a few minutes too late, because there was a semi filling both his saddle tanks with clear diesel...and they only have a small car filler nozzle on the pumps, so we had lots of chat time with the locals.  While we were waiting, Al pointed out the "roof garden" on the elevator.


Back at the camper, calling it an early night so we can be fresh as a daisy tomorrow to get back to combining again.  There had only been 0.2" in the combine guage, but with the humidity so high, the bite test was still around 16% moisture for the wheat.  Clouds had built up to the south and east, but we eventually ended up with a blue cloudless sky...very promising.


Patience...patience...