What’s Up?

     The millet is up—up off the ground, where it has been since September 8.  The weather has cooperated by remaining dry.  Imagine that!  Dry weather in Eastern Colorado!

  

      This crop seemed charmed from the beginning, starting with a gentle ½”  of rain a few days after it was planted, to continual showers during wheat harvest ( another “go figure”), to the dry weather while it cured in the windrow.

     To top it off, the harvest concluded on Friday, two bins full and a little left over besides.  Saturday morning, it began to rain.  I finished cleaning the dregs out of the truck bed in a light shower, with thunder over-powering the whine of the shop vac.  The truck got a bath.  I stashed vacuum and headed for the house.

      Another thing up is the wheat, at least that I planted first, on September 9 & 10.  (Important activities like singing and attending family meeting interrupted wheat planting.)

     The wheat should be off to a good start, too.  I finished planting on Thursday.  The Saturday morning shower should insure a good stand.  Never one to press my luck, I did not clean out the drills.  May have to replant some, you know.

     The Autumnal equinox was up this week, too.  Always a time for reflection on the year(s) past, a time when I clean off the tractors and shed them, let them hibernate out of the weather until next spring when it is time to wake them. 

      I make reminder notes to myself for each machine (necessary because I can’t always remember), “Left turning brake”, Power steering pump”, “Adjust fast idle”, “Try to find new idler sprockets”.  The idea is to do those things during the late Fall or early Spring, when the weather is somewhat cooperative.  It doesn’t always happen.

     Then, I have to take time out of the spring work to do what I should have done earlier.  I begin to understand my Dad, who wasn’t real big on preventative maintenance.  Inertia becomes more important with age, especially the “bodies at rest” part.

     As the sun slowly sets in the west, the straight west, the Summer of 2017 also sets.  The fading sunset glow brightens the shadows.