The Dust Settles

Things have slowed down a little since the heavy hitters have moved on.  One more trip through the CRP grass and the summer fallow as the crane migrates to the north and east.

 

    As it passed by the old Number 3 (the old John Deere combine), I couldn’t help but remember how that old combine was the highest thing on the farm.  We used to climb to the top of the grain bin to drop our homemade bandana parachutes.

      In High Wide and Lonesome, Hal Borland tells how as a young boy on a prairie farm near Gary, Colorado, south of Brush, the flatness of the prairie affected his perspective.  When he went to town, a two storey house overwhelmed him with its impressive rise into the sky.     

      I’m not exactly a kid, but the thrust of crane and wind generator tower into the sky has me a bit overwhelmed.  Every morning is sort of a surprise with the dawn revealing the towers popping up all around.

 

      Well, back to the flat and mundane.  Well not exactly.  I finished the summer fallow on Monday and Tuesday entertained by tower-raisings in the neighbor’s field, dodging towers and roads in my own field.  

 

 

 

A few red roots that escaped the last operation thrived and enjoyed a reprieve while I waited in vain for a rain.

 

      And now that the big heavies won’t be lumbering across our fields anymore, I can finish fencing the east quarter and get some cattle in there.

     My bridge-piling corner post lasted little more than a year.

 

     The top part was easily removed.  The bottom two and a half feet were another story.  I’m thinking of wisdom tooth removal, piece by painful piece.

  

    An old cedar post will have to do for now.  What did the advertisement say?  The post that outlasts the hole?

     Removing the old corner and replacing it took quite awhile.   Wednesday and  Thursday found me finishing the north side and starting the east line.  I had the wire laid out and planned on having cattle in there all summer, but then came the wind towers.  The workers cut the wire on the east and west to make a path to bury cable and run cranes and a thousand other pieces of equipment.  So I made gates across the path, this one for the east line.

 

                                And it did rain a little, .25 of an inch, Wednesday afternoon.

 

    The fence project got juggled with another just-as-important activity—getting seed wheat and preparing to plant.

 

     After five or six hours of fencing, I would retire to less strenuous tasks such as getting the old GMC truck (familiarly known as “The Chuckle Truck) out of the shed and preparing it for the arduous journey it must make.  I had the bed covered with corrugated tin to protect the wood floor from barb wire, dead shingles, steel posts, and other such stuff as it has hauled these past few years.  Remove the tin and give the bed a good sweeping, install the tailgate, air up the tires, and oh yes, install a new battery, to the tune of $124.

      Friday morning I set off for a sixty mile roundtrip towards Matheson to get seed wheat.  Finding the road less traveled was difficult.  I met ten trucks hauling rock used by the wind company to top off the access roads to each tower.  Before I could get off the county road and onto the pavement, two of the empty rock-haulers were on my tail.  Once on the pavement, I had room to let them pass me, and so I did.

 

     The rest of the journey was uneventful.  I arrived at Kochis Farms, took on 120 bushels of wheat, wrote a check for $1400+ (the price of wheat has gone up in 20 years!), made a stop at the hardware store in Limon for fencing materials, and arrived home a little more than three hours after I left.

     Back to the fence.  I finished Saturday afternoon in the heat, after about freezing to death while working on it that morning.

 

    A cold wind blew out of the north with occasional spits of rain when I was too far from the pickup to take cover.  Not enough moisture to do any good, only to dampen me enough to make the cold wind that much more miserable.

 

      A road grader appeared.  He smoothed out some of the tracks the crane left as well as the ridges and ruts from the original path-making and the myriad other footprints left by other equipment.

    The operator and I passed the time of day for awhile.  When he left a few hours later, things were a little closer to back-to-normal.  And, the gates were closed!

     Off to Adams County for some music this weekend.

 

 

The Height of the Wind Generator Construction

Crane Leavings

     In the last exciting adventure of the transformer invaders, a crane crept across the land erecting 17’ diameter tubes.

 

 It had the reach to add a second section, but since other sections weren’t on site at the time, the crane moved on—across summer fallow, across grass, through fences.

 

                                         But a flurry of trucks arrived with blades

 

 

     Rumor has it that the maintenance man (Turbine Cowboy for you Weather Channel fans) will crawl into the blade checking for cracks by looking for them from the inside.  Acrophobes and claustrophobes need not apply.

    Other trucks brought second and third stages.  So that on August 15, things looked like this:

 

 

     And then along came “Terex”, slow-walkin’ slow-talkin’ Terex.  He’s actually west of road 26 in the neighbor’s corn field.

 

                                             A turn to the right, and he’s on us.

 

         And so to work.  Don’t forget to notice the reception committee in the top of the tower.

 

 

                                                                Then the nacelle. 

 

 

     When I stepped out the front door around 8 a. m. Thursday morning, my first thought was someone had placed a huge crucifix in the front yard.

 

                           Just the boys and their amazing machines doing their day’s work. 

    Of course, there is a little more to it than that.  Somebody has to be up there to guide the wheel into place, line up the bolt holes, insert bolts, tighten nuts, and release the crane.

 

 
                       I hope they get paid well.  I don’t think you could ever pay me enough. 

      Anyway, the crane migration, which began in the west, has moved east, leaving only their tracks.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Time to re-tire.

     Lots of things happening at the ranch, mostly related to the wind farm business.  But first, some unraveled ends to clinch.

    The new tires for the Ford tractor arrived, were mounted on the rims, and picked up on one of our trips to Limon for ice during last week's fair.

    Half done,

     And completely done.  The reason for new tires for the Ford tractor was to get usable tires for the drill.  Twenty years of neglect haven’t been totally idle.  The pocket gophers have been busy.

     And the birds.  We have these current bushes around the place.  Dad said the family who lived here before us back in the 40’s, the Kollaths, planted them originally.  The birds love the berries.  Just below the birds favorite roosting place, current bushes spontaneously erupt.  The birds found the drill a convenient resting place.

       The tire scheme worked half way.  The problem:  the tractor tires were 16 inch.  So was one of the drill tires.  Apparently, the two drills aren’t Siamese twins, as one has 16 inch wheels, the other 15 inch wheels.  The 15 inch wheel posed problems.  I have a 15 inch tire, but three attempts to install an inner tube failed.  Temporary solution, take a wheel off the plow.

      With a little trouble, the drill arose from its resting place and parked in front of the shop where it underwent a lot of neglected maintenance.   The seeding shafts and the sliding mechanism that controls seeding rate had to be freed from rust.  That took quite a few hours.  Drive gears are cleaned. The “walkway” on the back of the drill has to be replaced.

     Having decided it will not rain, I made a tough decision to “work” the summer fallow, as some weeds escaped the last operation and have gotten quite big.  But the real concern was what we used to call “persley” weed. (Correct name purslane, I think.) It has a corpulent vine and a shallow root system.  If you pull it up roots and all and set it back down, purslane considers itself transplanted and keeps right on a-growing.    

      Well, out to the field on a Saturday morning with the “new” Miller Weeder, this one 21 feet instead of the 15 feet of the old Miller Bar.

     The Miller Weeder sat for a few years, too.  It provided the backdrop and hazard for Hole 6 of the golf course.

 

It took a little work to get it field ready.

                  The “wings” folded down, a few teeth replaced, and we’re ready to go.

       My old nemesis the wind soon found me out, shifting to the northeast almost immediately upon my laying out the land.  Pretty dirty going southwest.  But there was good news. 

   
      It turns out that purslane has a nemesis, too.

      My color-blind eyes find the worm right-away first thing smack dab in the middle of the picture, but you inflicted with normal rods and cones may have trouble seeing the little fellow.

     Those vines should be covered by small leaves, but the creepy crawlers have denuded them.  The vine is still juicy, somewhat like a bean sprout, but I don’t see them doing much growing without their leaves.

     The worms shouldn’t get too fat and sassy.  Mother Nature has another link in the food chain waiting in the wings:

                           Please Mr. Hawk, don’t eat them all.  They still have a job to do.

            Well, back to the tillage operation, conducted in the shadow of old number 119.

    Coming up:  Towers up, traffic down.

The Shaved Ice Business

Back to the Old Grind

      Twenty-five or 26 years ago, we bought these machines.   

     The original idea was to make a little summer money and maybe provide summer jobs for our daughters to earn a little college money.  The summer jobs idea didn’t work out very well. 

      We tried setting up at three or four fairs and a couple of auto shows, but we ended up doing one fair a year, the LincolnCcounty Fair in Hugo.  It takes up most of the week, starting with clean up.

      Then transfer and set up.

       A trip to Limon every day for 100 pounds of ice, and serving customers. 

Some very satisfied ones.

       Watching the world go by during the slow times.

     Musn’t forget the highlight of the Fair, the Homebrew Contest held on Thursday evening.

 

      The brewers are on the left, the “judges” on the right.  The judges are those who don’t mind being seen sipping a brew in public.  Contest organizer Jim sets up cups with numbers on them.  Each brewer gets a number.  Each judge gets one ticket.  After trying a sample of each product, the judge drops his ticket in the numbered cup that corresponds to the best brew.

    My brown ale tied for fifth—out of six entries.  Oh well.  It’s not whether you won or lost but how you played the game, and trying your competitors’ ware.

    The big winner—Apricot Blond.

      That’s how last week went, Tuesday getting ready for fair, Wednesday through Saturday at the fair.  We finished unloading in the dark Saturday night following the final event, the biggest attraction of the fair, the demolition derby, highlighted by the school bus crash competition.

      Well, last event unless you attend the fair dance that starts about 9 Saturday night and goes into Sunday morning.  Sorry, but I didn’t have much left for dancing after being on my feet shaving ice most of the week.

      Sunday found us in the greater Denver area rehearsing with my siblings for August 26 appearances in Brighton.

     Rockies game Monday night.  (Lots of shopping Monday before the game, fish and chips at the Irish pub right before the game.) 

     I tell you this farming business is lots of work.  Finally back to the ranch on Tuesday.  I have a few things to do before the wheat gets planted.