September 5, 2018

View of the day-First thing this morning, everything looks so peaceful at the lineup.

Al had come home with bad news last night. He had picked up some fence wire and it had wrapped around the front of the rotor...seems to be an annual ritual. They were pretty much finished for the night so Al figured we would go out bright and early to clear it out in the daylight.

It had gotten down to freezing temperatures last night, so this morning was fresh, to say the least. With several layers on, we headed to the field to get the wire out of the rotor. With the header raised all the way and a piece of coroplast down on the ground to protect the knees from the canola stubble, Marilyn was able to get set to start.

Al helped get the trough underneath pried open and held that way with the four inch side of a 2X4. Not a lot of room to work with...but that's all we had. It took better than an hour, but eventually we got the four foot piece of barbed wire unwrapped and we were back in business.

Al started combining and Marilyn went back to the camper to make lunch and clean up after the dusty job under the combine. While she was in repair mode, she decided to take the motor off the rear stabilizer jacks on the camper, which had quit working late last year. God forbid we should have to crank manually when we have the technology to push a button and have the RV level itself on its own. All we needed now was to get the motor tested/repaired/replaced.

Marilyn took lunch out for Al and rode around a bit, then he decided to take the afternoon off and let Marilyn combine for a change...just in time to do the dance with the power poles. After checking his eyelids for cracks and getting caught up on some season premiere episodes on the DVR, he came back out to the field to swap out again. 

Marilyn rode around a bit too long after he came out and got the drone out just after sunset. The wind had completely disappeared and it was all but impossible to see anything when all the combines were close together.

She had been hoping to get some aerial shots of all the dust, but just as she got it in the air, a whiff of wind started up...as did the mosquitoes, which made the flight even shorter.

Another cold night forecast...good thing the propane got topped up...