Harvest 2013

       For the first time since 1988, wheat harvest has come to the old farm.  A combine I bought in 1990 (maybe 1991) which was 25 years old then, has been put to use on my crop instead of being used for custom hire. 

     The combine, born in 1964, is now 49 years old.  It hasn’t done anything but sit in the shed since 2006.  It’s out and ready to go.

     Both trucks had to be vetted, brake lines bled, hoist and gear box oil checked, u-joints and steering greased, and tires aired.   Those ablutions require a lot of rolling around under the trucks, which seems to take a lot more energy than it used to.

     Oh yes, and mouse droppings removed from cab and under the hood.  The shop vacuum makes that job much easier.  I used to have to try to blow everything out with air pressure.  You don't get the "repercussions" with a vacuum.    

 

 

The grain bin took a little while, too.  I’ve never got electricity to the bin, so shop vac need not apply.  Brooms and shovels with dust mask.  Get it clean, then caulk the base to try to keep the water out.  Finally, spray a little disinfectant to kill the weevils and other such vermin.  I used vinegar this time.  We’ll see how that works out.  The hardest part is getting in and out of the thing.

 

  

     Uncle Ricky and I erected the bin.  We dug the hole, formed it up, and poured the cement.  The concrete record attests to the date.  We also did the bin-raising.

 

      The neighbors have used the bin a couple of times in the past 20 years.  I used it once when the elevators got full and I didn’t want to set in a line of trucks waiting to unload.  That was in my custom-cutting days.  I dumped into it.  As soon as I was done harvesting, and everyone else, too, I hauled the wheat to town.

 

     The auger works, finally.  It took about as much time as the combine to get ready.  It hasn’t done anything but sit outside for ten years.  Here it is on its way up to the top of the bin.

 

     Well, now for the bad news.  I will have plenty of room in the grain bin for this year’s crop.  I cut a sample on Tuesday, July 9.

 

    

      I couldn’t get it tested till Wednesday.  It tested 10.3% moisture.  (Below 13% moisture is considered safe to bin without worrying about spoilage.)

      So harvest began Wednesday about 3 p. m., after I changed a hydraulic hose on the combine.  It rained about .1” around 4:30.  That shut me down.

      Thursday, I spent most of the morning getting the auger positioned in the bin.  Quite a job for one person.

    

     I cut all afternoon Thursday and got the big truck loaded.  I took most of the morning Friday to unload the truck.  I cut another truck load Friday afternoon.  I had to quit early so I could go to town to listen to The Mixers play for the local cancer walkathon.  That gave me the chance to visit with band member and Nephew Rich and his daughter Eleanor.  I lasted till about 10:30.  But the band played on--till midnight, if thy remained true to the schedule.

    Saturday morning I unloaded the truck for a second time.  Things went a lot better and I was back in the field by 11 a. m.  A “can’t miss” thunderstorm lined up in the west. So I quit about 4 and battened down the hatches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     That’s where I am today.  I’m over half done with about 300 bushels on the truck.  I may have another 6 or 7 hundred bushels left in the field.   That will figure out to be somewhere between 10 and 15 bushels to the acre.  Not exactly a bumper crop. 

 

 

 

 

One Picture Worth a Thousand Word

     Effrontery

 

 

Harvest Prep  The swather has to come out of storage in order to get the combine out of storage.

 

 

     Header and thresher are reunited after six years of separation.

 

 

    The old auger is in for a few repairs.

 

     Two problems, finding a long-gone bearing at the top of the auger, and finding a repair kit for the carburetor.  The auger came from the local grain dealer in the 50’s.  A call to Elevator Manager Ed sent me to Beaver Valley Supply in – Atwood, Kansas, where the bearing was readily available for $17 with shipping.

    I ordered the carburetor kit from Sears, but I couldn’t confirm the order.  The local NAPA dealer had the kit including a nozzle, which I broke by improper carburetor disassembly.  The Sears kit came on July 5, but didn’t include the nozzle.  Back it goes.  It's remarkable that you can still find parts for a 50-year-old engine.  Too big a problem to make the one-cylinder engines with fuel injection, I guess.  Anyway, the Briggs and Stratton engines use pretty much the same carburetor as they have for years.

    My carburetor rebuilding skills are lacking.  I have to redo the work because the float assembly doesn’t allow enough gas flow to run the engine.  The float is the golden doughnut.

 

     I took the old combine out on Saturday July 6 for a test run.  Wheat is still pretty damp.  It will probably be dry enough in two or three days, depending on the weather.  In the meantime, the bushel or two can rest on the old truck where it joins a little leftover seed wheat from last fall.

 

      Should be a busy week, unless it rains.  Wouldn't that be too bad?

The End of Patriarchy?

    For the past four or five years, the Goodwife and I have greeted the end of each summer’s day with two or three rounds of pasture golf.  Whereas I used to have to sometimes force myself to stop working, as I have signed on to Medicare and have qualified for full Social Security benefits, it’s much easier to surrender the day’s labor to experience a pleasant evening.  It’s not exactly because now that I’m on the public dole I don’t have anything to worry about.  It’s more like the old tank runs out of gas a lot faster than it used to.

    Well, it was bound to happen.  Those bobbers thumping up against the glass ceiling have either broken through to the attic, or have levitated the ceiling so high that we mere males can’t reach it.  And I, I am ashamed to report, am complicit in this feminine takeover.

     It happened like this:  One evening earlier this week, the Goodwife came in with a one-under par 26.

    And I came in for that round with a three-over par 30.

    It won’t be too long before some lady somewhere demands that her husband-to-be changes his name to her name.  Maybe it has already happened.

 

In other news, old number 118 returned to service this week.  Two cranes migrated out of Wyoming, gently lowered the injured blade, and after about a five day wait, raised the new blade into place.  Another couple of days and it was turning as usual.  Let the wind blow, and let a little rain fall.

    We got .27” on Friday.  When I was in high school, we had an English teacher who used a workbook and a Handbook of English to teach grammar.   We each had our own workbook, but to save money, there was just one handbook for each pupil’s desk.  So, we shared a handbook with students in other classes.  Well of course certain someones had to leave messages at various places in the handbook.  The teacher discouraged such defacement of public property, but found one so amusing he shared it with us:  “In case of a flood, stand on this book.  It’s DRY!”     

    As there is no dearth of dry places to stand here now, that handbook would be more worthless than ever today.

     In the movie “Cincinnati Kid” Steve McQueen (I think) is the lucky gambler who never loses.  Periodically, a little newsboy runs into “The Kid” on the street and insists that he and “The Kid” match coins.  “The Kid” reluctantly matches and takes the newsboy’s hard-earned coin.  Then he tells the boy that the reason he never wins is because he’s trying too hard.

      In the last scene, “The Kid” has finally lost, lost everything.  In a state of shock he wanders out of the building and there’s the newsboy who wants to match coins.  “The Kid” contemplates, fishes in his empty pocket, finds one last coin.  Sure enough, the newsboy matches and takes ”The Kid’s” last coin.  The newsboy looks up at “The Kid” and says with a smile, “You tryin’ too hard, Cincinnati.”

     Neighbor Lee told a story about a long-deceased neighbor, Babe Jones, who famously said, “Well, when it does rain, we’ll still need it.”

      In the meantime, we really must try to stop tryin’ so hard.      

 

     

The Longest Day

     The sod has all been “busted” for the 2014 crop,

 

 and what we need now is a good rain.  Actually, we have had nearly an inch of rain over the past ten days.  The problem is it all came in light showers, the biggest one of .4” came on June 18, my birthday present.  Other showers of .3” or so came last week.

 

  But then the wind blows, the sun shines, and the moisture is gone.

 

 

The wheat is stressed.  It should like the neighbor Lee’s.

 

     He used a lot of chem-till, which appears to preserve moisture better than regular tillage.  Lee assures me that “sod wheat” (the first crop following grass) is more resilient than I imagine.  Maybe he is right and I’m being too pessimistic.

    Meanwhile, it’s déjà vu all over again.

 

   No, that’s not last year’s picture.  Old number 118 windmill always had a clunking sound.  A week or so ago, a fissure opened in the trailing edge of one of the blades.

 

    Neighbor Jay thinks it got hit by lightning.  I think they left a few tools or a bolder in it which went up and down as the blades went around and around until it ripped a gash in the blade.

 

 No matter.  Two cranes have been assembled, a new blade delivered, and 118 undergoes some serious repair work.

 

    Meanwhile, the sun slowly sinks in the west and the longest day of the year dryly approaches.

 

 

 

June is Bustin’ Out All Over

     June started out with jacket weather, the clouds low, humidity high.

 

    

   Time to do a little work in the rockery.

 

 

    June bustin’ out should not have included sod busting, but it did.  This plow boy paid more attention to social obligations than to good ag practices.  April mud turned to June concrete.

      The plow, which had been going gangbusters during the first two weeks of May, went on strike after Memorial Day and refused to do anything but slide on top of the grass.  Retire the plow.

 

    A little paint will keep the rust away.  Break out the oneway. 

     Last year’s weight box redo had to be redone—shoddy welding.  Willy Suchanek’s wooden weight box outlasted my metal one by 39 years “or be’er."

       A new tire is in order.

 

    The sod busting got done, but a good rain would have made life easier.  It still would.  The wheat is showing the stress. 

                                   

But the bloomin’prairie didn’t seem to mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ford Seat Finale

     The story of theFord seats can come to its conclusion now.  The front seat went to Ohio and the rear seat went to Kentucky, shipped by Greyhound after a few days waiting on the “dock” in Hays, Kansas.

     The seats have been reupholstered and installed in their new bodies.  The front seat went from this:

 

to this

 

 

where it joined this

 

  

and was installed in this

 

 

     The seat and the work was a gift from two brothers to their father.  Father was driving a similar car when he was courting their mother.  While this Ford isn’t THE Ford the couple honeymooned in, the sign is the original.

 

    The family has owned the car for awhile and has been improving it all along.  Addition of the new front seat and new upholstery is the latest upgrade.  It looks pretty nice to me.

 

Meanwhile, the rear seat went to Kentucky.  It went from this

     

to

 

 installed in this

 

 

where it joins this

 

 

 

   While it was necessary to take the front seat down to the springs, the upholsterer of the rear seat left Mom’s Montgomery Ward seat cover job in tact and used it for the base for the new upholstery.      

      Both Fords are coupes, which my Kentucky seat purchaser tells me came in two varieties, a club coupe with a back seat, and a business coupe with cargo space instead of a back seat.  Hmmmm.  I’ll bet that in young-man think, you couldn’t do much business without a back seat.

      Well anyway, the seats have gone from the 2-door sedan to their new homes in coupes via a 50 year tour of duty in a school house-turned farm shop.  Here’s wishing them another 63 years.  

      Take a lesson from the Ford seats and their new owners.

    Sign your organ-donor card now.