Sunday, August 17, 2008

August 17, 2008-Happy Birthday Al!


View of the day-Six belts missing...Marilyn gave Al the same birthday gift he got 10 years ago...a bent roller, thanks to a big rock hiding in the swath.

We got the combine fueled and moved south to the field just after lunch. What a change, the moisture was 12.2%...we dropped the hammer.

The first field was split corner to corner by a deep water run that was pretty soft, so the farmer cut it in two pieces. Al had taken the first truckload into town and Marilyn had three rounds left to pick up when she managed to hit a big rock that was under the swath. Normally she could see where the swather had lifted up to go over any rocks...and there were lots of them...this time it was just low enough for the swather to go over...but not the pickup.

The same thing happened to Marilyn in North Dakota exactly 10 years ago...only the bend was a lot nastier. When Al got back to the field we started to dismantle everything to get the roller out so we could take it in to the machine shop across from the camper. After working on it for a couple of hours, we ended up roading the combine back into town...the bearings were seized and without getting them off, there was no way to remove the roller.

Al drove the combine back into town and parked it, hoping that the machine shop will be able to get us in first thing in the morning...sometimes they don't seem to be in too much of a rush to get things done.

We would have just caught up to the swather anyway...

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