July 2017

      The librarian told me, as she checked out my book, “Tomorrow, the due date will be August One.  Our summer is about over.”

     Yes, July 2017 is about in the history book.  Ordinarily, I would be trying to finish, or recover from, wheat harvest.  Some wheat in the area remains, but most has been cut.  The harvesters have had to work around numerous rain showers.  A half inch of moisture has been the biggest one, with most of the showers in the tenth-of-an-inch range.

     It has been wet enough that the millet is thriving.

     The neighbor’s corn would appreciate a bigger drink, I think, but it is tall enough to block the driver’s view of the intersection of county roads.  Approach the intersection with caution.

      The garden for 2017 is a bust.  Some predator ate all eight of the tomato plants I set out.  Out of a row of peas, only four plants survived.  I suspect pocket gophers got to the sprouted seed.

      I planted beans on the outside of the fence, opposite the peas.  The beans came up all right, but the rabbits took care of them.   I don’t think they can get inside of the fence, so I hold them guiltless in the tomato-pea fiasco.

     I have only a half-dozen potatoes to show for my pretty-limited garden efforts this year.  I may have a few zucchini and maybe a pumpkin or two, later this fall.

      The summer fallow has been a struggle, too.  It was too wet to work well last spring.  It was dry and hard as a rock in June.  In July, it was too wet again.  The Miller Weeder plugged up in the wet dirt. 

     The old-fashioned rod weeder worked.  I am just about finished doing the summer fallow for the third time.  There will be a fourth and maybe a fifth working before planting wheat.

     In other events, a piano-tuner stopped in this week.  Mike Thompson went to school in Ogallala, where the piano came from.  He allowed that he probably played this piano when he was a kid going to school.

     Mike asked me how long we had the piano.  I had no idea.  I remember Uncle Ricky bringing it to the farm.  The refinishing of the thing wasn’t quite done.  I remember applying the lacquer.  The Goodwife redid the “Apollo” on the front. 

     Mike found a stamp from Howard T Orr, the guy who tuned many pianos in this area.  It was dated 1975, so I guess the piano has been here since 1975 or before.

      It’s ready for a good jam session.

     Speaking of jam, the Goodwife laid in the supplies necessary for making her special low-sugar peach jam.  The peaches were $40 per box!  The going price, they say.  They don’t make boxes like they used to, either.

    We can have homegrown potatoes and peach jam with maybe a zucchini.  We may have to try some kind of millet dish, or millet flour, later this fall.  Thank God for the grocery store.       

      

830 Down

     First, the front end of the tractor went down.  Before I could even think, "what the dickens?” the left rear wheel went up.

     It was approaching six o’clock in the evening of a hot June day.  I was just getting a good start on the field.  There were some good-sized weeds that needed killing.

     I was deciding, should I quit now, or try for another round.  A “round” at that point took about 20 minutes to make.  Fate, inattention, something, took the decision out of my hands.

     The left front wheel had fallen off the tractor.  I saw the front axle assembly buried in the ground.  I crawled out of the cab and took a bigger than normal step to earth.  The backend of the tractor stood a little higher than normal, with the front end sunk lower than normal.

      Beneath the hitch, partially imbedded in the soil, lay the entire front wheel.  I was able to stop the tractor before I plowed the wheel.   It took a bit of digging, but I managed to pull the wheel from under the hitch.  I dug gingerly into the grease and now dirt of the wheel hub, the end that should have been on the inside end of the spindle.

     Bearing rollers and metal fragments appeared in the dirty grease.  The reason for the failure was obvious, wheel bearing failure.  Why hadn’t I noticed the wheel was loose?  It had to have been wobbling for a while before it fell off.

      I had plenty of time to consider the problem.  I was about as far east as I can go and still be on our property.  It was a mile walk back to shop, tools, and pickup.  With blocks, jack, and shovels, I bounced across the field in the old 4x4.   

     I had to do a major excavation just to get the jack under the front end of the tractor.  It took three or four resets of the jack before I got the front end of the tractor up and safely blocked to some semblance of normal.  A few pages of old newspaper removed the greased and dirt from the spindle.

     Fortunately, only the threads for the retaining nut were damaged a bit.  It appeared new bearings would fix the problem.  New bearings for a fifty-year-old tractor might be hard to find.  John Deere still had them, though.  It would be a week before I could get them.

     It was past eight o’clock before I had loaded the displaced wheel onto the 4x4 and returned to the farmyard.  The tractor would have to sit on blocks in the field for a day or two. 

     Duty called.  Duty, in the form of the “Big 3”, family, doctors, and quartet.  The wheel came off on a Saturday.  I was able to get back to it on Tuesday by removing a wheel from another tractor. 

     There were a few other pressing issues, like a big crowd coming for the weekend preceding the fourth of July, a kitchen floor replacement job that needed finishing before everyone arrived.  The weather took some of the pressure off.  A rain shower meant too wet to plow, so I shifted to floor work and that episode ended happily ever after.

    Using the borrowed wheel, I managed to finish my plowing on July 4, after the big party and all.  I picked up the new wheel bearings (I got two sets, figuring if the left was worn out, the right must be about worn out, too).  It was nearly $300 for the bearings, cups, felt washers and all.  Can’t worry about price.  Just be glad you can still get them.

     Four or five hours of driving out old bearing cups, driving in new ones, packing bearings with grease, placing wheel with new bearings on the spindles, returning borrowed wheel to its rightful owner, and things are back to normal. 

     Thank goodness for disposable gloves.  Wheel bearing business is among the greasiest, messiest job going.  Dad put grease fittings in every hubcap of every wheel on every implement on the farm.  He didn’t like wheel-bearing service, either.  He didn’t have rubber gloves.

     Now, I’m on my third trip over the summer fallow.  Things haven’t changed much.  It has been a little too wet to work the soil properly (can’t complain about the moisture).  There was this shrill screeching sound coming from the front of the tractor.  A generator bearing was failing.

     Guess what.  The bearing is nearly impossible to find.  It has numbers and everything still legible, but no such bearing and no cross references.  The local parts store couldn’t be much help.  They are facing their usual harvest rush and don’t have time to go on a bearing safari.

     The 820, still sitting in the shop waiting the final touches to crankshaft replacement, provided a generator (also the front wheel) for the nonce.  I found a bearing online by using dimensions, inside diameter or bore, outside diameter, and width.

      It was déjà vu all over again on Thursday evening, about six o’clock, when the rod weeder wheels started sliding.  After a prolonged investigation, I determined a bearing on a chain-tightening sprocket had failed.

     Guess what again.  That bearing is no longer in production, nor is the sprocket.  I found a very similar bearing online.  It will be the middle of next week before that bearing arrives at the farm via UPS.  (What am I complaining about?  Even in the old days, we had to go out to the mailbox to pick up the stuff we ordered from Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Wards.)

      No worries.  Mother Nature cooperated, with a third of an inch of moisture Thursday evening and over a half an inch on Friday.  I may have everything ready to go by the time things dry out enough.

     In the meantime, our quartet sang for a ninetieth birthday party on Saturday.  The old guy was a farmer.  The party was in the Methodist church where the table decorations were toy tractors.  The old feller quipped that his birthday wasn’t really until this upcoming Tuesday, but they wanted it today to be sure he’d still be here.

      We sing for another ninetieth birthday party this afternoon.  Never a dull moment.   

Harvest 2017

      It’s wheat harvest season.  There’s no wheat for me to harvest this year.  After contacting the crop insurer, the decision to destroy the wheat was fairly-easily made.  The insurance adjuster estimated the crop at ½ bushel per acre.  

      One-half bushel per acre doesn’t quite get my seed back, not to mention the nightmare of trying to thresh wheat that has more weeds than wheat.  The decision to destroy was easily made.  How to destroy it?

     After an extremely dry fall and winter, the spring turned wet.  Just getting the summer fallow disked was a chore.  The weeds and wheat to be destroyed were getting bigger by the day.  I couldn't handle both, summer fallow and destroy the wheat.

     I turned to Neighbor Jim (no relation at all to my brother-in-law) for help.  When things dried out a little, which turned out to be the middle of May, Jim disked out the “wheat” in about eight hours, a job that would have taken me four days. 

     Meanwhile, I finished the job of oneway disking, which I started in April, on June 2.  Last year’s heavy stubble kept weed growth down and protected soil from drying by sun or breeze.  It was still plenty damp when I finished the job.

      There were a few weed escapes from the first disk operation to destroy this year’s wheat, so Jim disked it again on June 5.  Two weeks later, he planted organic Prozo millet.  It was hot and dry.  Some of the millet emerged.

     

Then the weather changed.  It got damp and cool.  On July 7, it rained. 

      The millet loved it.

      But it is wheat harvest season.  The weather has turned cool and damp.  It figures.  Even though I have no skin in the game this year, I still feel the frustration of having Mother Nature conspire against us in this part of the country.  The harvest monsoon.

     It has been a dry year.  I don’t hear anybody complaining about the damp weather.  We need the moisture.   

July 4 Party

    Lacking any wheat to harvest this year, it seemed a good time to hold a 4^th of July gathering at the farm.  It has been a few years since we did that.

     Time was, our mother’s birthday being on July 5, we would gather here, sometimes going on to Walks Camp Park, to celebrate both birthdays.  Returning the farm to wheat production put somewhat of a crimp in the tradition.  It took a lot of time to get ready for guests as well as getting equipment ready to harvest wheat.

      July 4 fell on Tuesday this year.  Folks planned to celebrate for the entire week, some things  happening on the weekend before the fourth, and many things taking place the weekend after the fourth.  I put out feelers to see if there was any interest in partying at the farm.  There was, and the weekend before the fourth seemed best.  The invitations went out, and the folk came in.

     One group peeked in late Friday night. 

Most came Saturday afternoon. 

     

They brought campers,

and tents,

  and awnings.

     Some stayed in town and came out to the farm during the day.

Some made their first visit.

Mike fixed Sunday morning breakfast using the “chuck wagon.”  Biscuits and gravy!

We pitched a few horseshoes, played a little golf, had a jam session, and ate a lot.  A good time was had by all.