June 29, 2011

View of the day-Gerry lures Al into the green one for a test drive.

We had intentions of being on the road bright and early, but we didn’t have anywhere to be, so we ended up leaving around 11am. We went to the bin site and hooked up the pick-up head, then started out for Phillipsburg.

We stopped in Hayes for lunch then carried on in the blistering heat…103ºF on the pickup read out. There were combines running all over the place, most of the fields had been combined but as we got closer to Phillipsburg, it looked like they were just starting out. We stopped at the CaseIH dealer in Phillipsburg for a visit and to pick up some oil…they were good enough to let us leave the header there until we can move it further north.

After we got it backed into a spot that would make it easy to hook up behind the cart trailer, we headed west to do some visiting and to get Marilyn’s laptop. Gerry & Lynn owners of Prevost Harvesting had picked it up from Staples on their way through Yorkton.

We took one of the secondary roads where there was little or no traffic…in 70 miles we might have seen 10 vehicles. Along this road, there were fewer combines running and the ones that were making dust were just the local farmers. As we got closer to Colby, we could see the crops were not as far along and even though there were cutters out in the fields, they were just sampling to see how the moisture was.

We pulled into Brewster just as a semi was pulling out of the elevator and was waiting to weigh out empty. Looking at the licence, we could see it was from Saskatchewan and was the very harvester we had been looking for. We had a quick chat with him, then followed him out to the field where they were combining. We got there just as they had finished combining the irrigation pivot corners, which were plenty dry…but the crop under the pivot was a whole other story…still pretty green. They were done for the day.

We followed them back to Colby so Marilyn could get her laptop and got invited to stay for supper...honest, we don’t do this on purpose. We had another great home cooked meal and lots of visiting before starting back to Great Bend…160 miles, but thankfully interstate highway except for the last 30 miles.

There are custom cutters parked EVERYWHERE…