August 17, 2012

View of the day-Making the second last pass on the canola...light at the end of the tunnel and a wash is in order.

Happy Birthday to Al! It was his day today and he made a point of reminding Marilyn of it every chance he got...just so she would be nice to him.  She couldn't decide what kind of cake to get him, so he got carrot cake AND cheese cake...and season two DVD's of Modern Family and The Middle.  Marilyn has learned not to get him something she "thinks" he will use...or learn to use, so you can't go wrong with his favorite passtime TV.

The night got down to 38ºF, which made getting up this morning pretty slow.  The sun was shining, however, and once the blinds were opened it warmed up quickly.  After making lunches and getting the water iced up, we were ready to take on, what we hoped, was the last day of canola.

We had a bit of a wait for the humidity to drop, but we finally started making dust around noon.  We estimated there were about 90 acres left, but we had a slough to work around which cut back on productivity. It was at the far end of the field, so Al had to do some shuttling all the way back to the yard, but the good news was that the bins were really close now as we were getting to the end, so he could just leave the truck at the bin and dump the cart right there.

Roger estimated that we should be done by 7pm and Al figured more like 7:30-8pm.  Roger was the winner, as we lapped up the last pass with 10 minutes to spare at 6:50pm. The 2012 USA portion of our harvest was officially done as Marilyn did the same thing as the cart and dumped right into the General as it was parked at the bin.

We got everything parked, then went back to the camper to get some papers that needed to get faxed to the border so we could take the combine back through, then went into Bismarck to find someplace to fax.  The truck stop was right next to McDonald's, so we faxed first then ate later and never even had to go into the city.

Back at the camper, Al's phone was ringing steady as he got birthday calls from back home.  He was still counting down the hours he had left for "Marilyn being nice" time, and even tried to weasel an extra hour by using the time on the satellite receiver that was still on home time...an hour behind. Marilyn got off easy...he went to sleep early to get ready for cleaning day tomorrow.

Or is it old age...