July 29, 2012

View of the day-Down the prairie trail between the cornfields to get to the waiting combine and cart.


We were hoping to get another early start, but when we listened to the 6am news and it was 93% humidity...well, we just knew we could sleep in for a bit.  We finally headed out to the field around 11am and by then the clouds were getting out of the way and the sun was doing its work to dry down the air.

After servicing the combine, Marilyn started making dust, but we had hit the wall with the trucks.  The empty truck had not made it back to the field and there was only enough room for an extra cart load...the other truck had been filled the night before.  Just in time the truck showed up and we were back to business as usual.


We got that field finished and moved across the fence line to the last field...65 acres and we were starting at 3pm...shouldn't be a problem, right?


Enter, Mother Nature.

Marilyn saw the notorious puffs gathering in the sky, but it seemed like they would stay to the north of us.  Every time she turned around at the south end of the field, the sky to the north was getting darker and the clouds were getting bigger...but the hammer was down, there was only 40 acres left to go.  Surely it would hold off for a couple of hours.

Okay...so it held off for 30 minutes.  At the south end of the field, Marilyn got a few drops on the window of the combine...perhaps doing the thorough job of washing them this morning put the jinx on.  


There were several times, the urge to just bail and head for the truck came over Marilyn, but...the rule is, unless the water is running off the header-keep combining.  So that is what she did...until the end of the pass.  The wind came up, which did a great job of whipping some of the dust and chaff off that had collected in the crevices of the combine...a perfect pre-clean for the rain that was about to blast us.  Marilyn just made it to the north end and got dumped in the cart when the rain hit hard.

Al had to try and get the cart tarped in the wind and rain. Fortunately he had gotten the semi tarped before the wind hit...but with Marilyn strategically parking the combine to break the wind, he got the job done and we raced to get parked and out of the field.  While Marilyn was getting the combine parked and running to the Dodge, Al got the semi moved out on to the grass road, then jumped into the pickup and we were off to drive the two miles on the back trails to get to the highway before it really started coming down.

The day had such promise and we won't know how much rain there was out at the combine until tomorrow, but here is a machine that doesn't care if it rains or shines...the one on the right, not the red one.


Early night in...