Well its always good to get harvest started. The soybeans are always ready first and then the corn. But this year it is all going to be late. Normally I would have been harvesting beans a month ago but the crop went in late due to wet weather. And speaking of wet weather that is what we have today and tomorrow. As the fall proceeds forward it seems that the good days get fewer and the not so good for harvest days, become more plentiful. I am thankful that facing this that I am a small hobby level farmer these days. I feel for the guys with a lot of crops to harvest before winter this year. My harvester is 24 years old this fall, but still a good machine. I rebuilt the sicle or knive on the grain head of the harvester day before yesterday. It had a few years on it since I had done that...It will probably be the last time I will ever have to do that, I think it will last at least 3 years and my guess is that by that time I will be ready to fully retire as far as farming goes. But not totally sure, the way the country is headed it may become a necessity to have this additional income. Our economy is not a pretty sight, I don't see how it will ever recover. I hope it does, but we have this love affair with imported lower cost goods that are made outside the USA. By getting all these items real cheap it leaves us enough money to purchase cell phones, which by the way are no doubt made in china or japan, for everyone even the kids. Some are like little computers and my heavens you can play lots of games and send text messages even while driving to your friends. Or setting in class at school or college maybe...Whatever these low cost imported goods allow us other luxuries also not made in the USA. I wonder what percent of jobs needed for us to support ourselves have to leave the country before we figure it out? Maybe all of them, I guess I am not the sole slow learner.
And when most everything we consume comes from other countries that is a lot of jobs that have been moved to those countries. It was profitable for the companies to move there because they could then sell us the stuff at much lower cost which we all just dearly love....Everytime Walmart slashes everyday prices lower you can bet another job left the country. So where will our people get jobs if we are not making the goods that we consume? We really need to start paying attention to what we are doing. A friend in my Bible study told me resently that his wife purchased a can of peaches made in China. Is that a good thing when we grow peaches in Georgia and Michigan?
So maybe for now I will hang on to my day job of hobby farmer. Takes about two or three days to get a harvester ship shape and then you never know if it will run well all through harvesting or if you will be repairing many many more things as time goes on...I guess that is a little stress that a farmer must endure and maybe makes him not a stranger to prayer, even to "keep it running Lord".
So back to harvesting, I have 15 of my 75 acres of beans complete so I guess that would put me at 20%, at least a respectible first day considering not starting until 3 PM because of wetness from a slight rain the day before...The warm sunshine and slight breeze dried out the damp pods and allowed them to pop open and release the beans as they passed through the harvester ending up in my grain tank and then my truck and thus a once a year paycheck for the farmers.
My harvesting will keep me manually busy for the next few weeks but mentally I will be concerned for our country and where it is headed. This administration seems content to busy itself with getting us all health insurance at who knows what horrendous cost to us all...How that will address the real issue of getting people back to work I have not got a clue. And with leadership of change for changes sake and for no good reason, we are in some deep doo doo...and I fear with this particular "occupant" of the white house and the equally unqualified leadership in congress our ship of state is sailing into the perfect storm....buckle down the hatches...
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