Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Fall and Harvest Began Yesterday

Gee does it have to come so soon? I guess we all love fall with turning of the leaves and cool temperatures and no heating and no cooling draining our pocketbooks.
But its the later part that ushers in winter that is kind of a bummer...

But anyway it begins the sun crossed the equator yesterday intent on blessing the southern hemisphere with its warmth more so than us who have been left to fend for ourselves until March 21 when our old buddy the sun heads across the equator again and blesses us with another growing season...

But also Harvest began yesterday, little did I suspect but it did..SP and I were riding our bikes yesterday about noon and passed my first planted soybean field..The one that the Sheriff thought he had a drunk on his hands..(See May 17th blog), Well anyway as we passed I said you know I think all the green is gone from this field we may just try and cut these beans later today...She said well if there ready lets turn around an go back and get started now. Well we completed the 6 mile ride and then I spent 2 hours of lubrication on the old but still good 1985 combine, a 1620 Case IH rotory model..SP wanted to help so I said well I guess the windows on the combine could stand a wash job...She got inside and said, "good greif I could spend a week in here cleaning"..."I see lots of places for spiders to hide"....Well the windows are clean and no spiders challenging me so far...
We pulled into the field about 3 maybe and sure enough they went through like greased lightning and we were making dust and beans were falling into the hopper. We got out to check behind the combine to make sure the settings were correct and we were not blowing these 11 dollar beans out the back onto the ground...

This was sweetpea's first ride ever in a combine and she startled me when about the second time around the field she said,"you know I think I could run this"...and I said, "really?".....So after a couple hoppers and giving her a few pointers while I was operating the combine I changed from the operators seat to the buddy seat and let her have a go at it...I have to admit she was right, it was not more than about 3 rounds or so and sure enought "she could run this" and almost as good as I could.

She did find that "operating" a combine was a little more than just "driving" a combine but she was "good" and catching on fast to details of keeping the header width full and the crop coming into the combine at the optimun speed and effecientcy....Well anyway pretty and darn good, and when she is around and I get fatigued at the wheel of the machine she will probably be a willing relief operator when needed...Well today is not her day off and so I am on my own and had better get out there as I am burning perfectly good sunlight as I type....

Good day to all and GOD Bless....

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