Aw Hail

       It didn’t look like it would amount to much.  I could keep disking, I thought.

      But then, it started sprinkling.  Within five minutes, it was really letting its hair down.  I was headed for the house when the ice started falling and the wind really picked up.

     I rode out the storm in the tractor cab.  It didn’t seem so bad at first.  The trees didn’t lose any leaves.  The weeds didn’t get knocked down much.  The rain gauge showed a half inch.

      That was Saturday afternoon about 3:30.  We took off for the weekend Sunday morning.  When we returned on Wednesday, nothing looked quite right.  The wheat seemed prematurely ripe, losing its green color.  Some of the grass around the farmyard, which I hadn’t mowed for three weeks, showed signs of damage, drying up, not rank and green as it should have been after a rain.

      About 8:30 Thursday morning, I called the insurance company to report Saturday’s hail storm.  By 10:00, two hail adjusters pulled into the yard.  They had been nearby, checking out hail damage.  They stopped in because they were close. 

      I was greasing tractor and disk, getting ready to try to finish disking the newly chiseled ex-crp ground.  It has been a long haul.  Taking a week to empty a grain bin that should have been done in two days, two flat tires on the new tractor, various and other breakdowns, I am behind in my work.  Nothing too unusual about that, I guess.

      I started disking and the crop adjusters took about 45 minutes to do theirs.  They waited for me at the end of the field.  They didn’t have much good news. 

      Maybe three to five bushels per acre, he said.  Damage?  No, expected yield. That’s what’s left. Ouch.

      The heads were not finished filling.  Damage to the plant would prevent the filling process from finishing.  What was left would not be very high quality, low test weight, for example.  Plus, severe weather such as wind and heat would further deteriorate the quality of the crop.

    Options.  Let the crop stand.  Plow up the crop.  Hay the crop.  Harvest the crop, three-to five bushels of poor-quality grain.

     Not too many good options, for sure.  It’s too late in the season to plow it up and get anything planted.  The neighbors have moved a swather into position, apparently ready to make hay of their ruined crop, when it dries up enough.

      I will explore the possibility of having someone make hay out of it.  I don’t need any hay, so I would have to try to find someone who does need it.  With the wet spring we have had, good-quality hay will probably be abundant this year. 

     So, it looks like leave it stand, the fallback option.

      Anyway, it wasn’t a good year to lose a crop, having bought “new” equipment and all.  I guess there’s never a good year to lose a crop.  That’s why you buy crop insurance.

     “Into each life some rain must fall,” old Longfellow wrote and the Ink Spots sang.

     Hold the ice, please.

 

Jack's Bin

     It might have been a cobra in that pit, its beady eyes mesmerizing the three of us as we peered through the narrow doorway.

     But no.  It was grain, wheat, slowly sliding down the sloped concrete floor into a running auger.  It was a sight we had hoped to see three days earlier.  It was, at last, a welcome sight.

     On Tuesday, three trucks showed up to carry away the contents of the grain bin at Jack’s place.  Brother Harry and I had been working hard to get things set up and ready.  We had loaded a pickup with tools, gas, shovels, belts, and two augers.  A third auger on wheels dutifully followed the 4010 to the bin sight.  

      Using the front-end loader on the 4010, we had managed to drop one of the augers down the tube and into the grain at the bottom of the cone-shaped pit.  Three semis pulled up about that time.

     We were just getting ready to start moving wheat, but when I started the other auger, the one that relays the wheat from the pit auger into the truck, the belt driving the pit auger flew off and got eaten up by the second auger.  In the process, the belt got cut in two.

     That was how the rest of the day went.  Though I had brought a bunch of belts, none worked.  Eventually, we pulled that pit auger out and replaced it with one run by an electric motor.  The electric motor is powered by a generator.  We had trouble getting the depth of the auger set so the electric motor could turn it.

      When we finally got it turning out a good-sized stream of grain, it overheated and shut itself off.  By that time, we had one truck loaded and on its way, and another truck less than a fourth full.  Attempts to find another motor failed.  Finally, about 8:30, we resolved to find a different motor the first thing in the morning and two truckers spent the night in Jack’s yard.

    Wednesday morning, one truck left empty to meet other commitments and Dave, the head driver, satyed to help us get the job done.  Failing to find another motor, we pulled the pit auger up a bit so it was barely in the wheat.  The electric motor’s overload protector had failed to reset, so we bypassed it.  The lighter load was to prevent the motor from burning up.

     It worked, but it took five hours to load the truck.  After the truck left, I returned home to try to finish chiseling CRP grass that will now be grain-producing again.  I was within three or four hours of finishing when the bolts on the chisel frame sheered off, letting one I-beam fall and twisting the remaining I-beam pretty badly.  My chiseling was done. 

     I went back to the farmyard sans chisel and hooked up to the disk.  By the time I got the disk ready to go, it was quitting time.  Thus ended Wednesday.

     On Thursday, Dave the trucker called saying he had ruined two tires on his trailer and he would be a little late.  So I set out to disk.  Things went well for three hours.

      Then I saw that the right rear outside dual tire was totally flat. Once again, I was nearing completion, but, no, fate denied me.

     As I was mulling this over, Dave called to say he was five miles out.  I parked tractor and disk and hurried down to Jack’s.  Where we sat for another five hours, letting the truck slowly fill.  It was past 8 o’clock when I got home.  And that was Thursday.

      On Friday morning, I debated whether to risk disking with one flat dual.  I opted to mow the yard instead.

     About noon, Dave-the-brother arrived with a spare motor and an ammeter.  With a spare waiting in the wings, we could be a little more aggressive with the original motor.  Dave attached the ammeter and we slowly lowered the auger deeper into the pit until the motor was pulling 10 amps.  This time, the truck got loaded in about two hours.  

     The bin still had wheat left in it.  Good news when it comes to getting a check for the wheat.  But not such good news for those weary of the struggle.  Dave-the-trucker thought there might be more than he could haul, too.

     So, Saturday morning, Dave-the-brother and I got out the big Dodge truck, aired its tires and headed for Jack’s place.  Dave-the-trucker was there by nine, a little ahead of us.  After about an hour, the bin bottom began to appear beneath the slowly sliding wheat.  It was a sight we sorely needed to see. 

     We went through the usual ritual of finishing off a grain bin, shoveling, sweeping, getting the last shovelful out.  We moved the wheeled auger out of the way, fired up the 4010 and pulled the pit auger out.  Dave-the-trucker was soon on his way back to Nebraska.

      Dave-the-brother and I ferried augers, tractor, and truck home.  After a lunch break, we returned to Jack’s with a shop vac and finished cleaning up the bin.  It was past five when we got back from that job. 

     The job that should have taken two days stretched to five days.  But at last, it was done.