Rain Aftermath

      Some years ago, in another real dry spell, we stopped one Friday afternoon at a truck stop in Burlington to grab a bite on our way to the farm.  While we were there, it began to rain.  Among the customers were several locals, some with three-year-olds or younger, and a couple of truck drivers from Indiana.

     As the rain drops began hitting the windows, many of the diners turned to look out the windows.  Some of the parents even took their children to the windows to watch it rain.  There was an audible expression of wonder and joy.

    The two truck drivers stopped their conversation, not to watch it rain, but to watch in wonder the folks who found rain so amusing.  Noticing the truck drivers’ amusement, I said to them, “Boys, we haven’t seen this in a long time here.  Those kids there have never seen it.”  They pretended to understand.

      There have been a few rains during this dry spell, but few enough that rain is still a wonder.  The actual amount we received while Northern Colorado was flooding was 2”.

     The rain had an effect on the golf game.

     Will the real golf ball please stand up?  The imposter mushrooms found the rain life-giving.

     Time to dig a few potatoes.

     In this lazy man’s way of raising potatoes, “digging” means pulling the hay away from the plant, being careful not to rake away any spuds with the hay.

 By Thursday, it had dried out enough to think about planting wheat. 

    This year, getting the drills ready to go didn’t take nearly as long.   The seeding mechanism turned easily.  I had planned to try it on Wednesday afternoon, but the fates interfered.  I noticed one of the tires had developed a bulge.  Well, it might work, so I aired it up.  When I got ready to go Wednesday afternoon, had the drills greased and full of wheat, I noticed the inner tube was beginning to protrude between the bulge and the wheel rim of that tire.  By the time I got the tire changed (finding a suitable tire in the bone pile took quite a while), Neighbor Lee showed up.  He didn’t stay too long, but it was too late to start anything now.

    So off I went Thursday morning and made a few rounds.  I had to put the toys away at noon, pack up and head off for Colorado Springs for our annual September family meeting.  Perhaps the fates were on my side this time.

    We arrived at the gathering place Thursday evening after a bout with the Garmin lady who probably previously had a job with the Sirens directing sailors to their deaths on the rocks.      

  

     Five couples stayed here, each with their own bathrooms, and a swimming pool.  Sister-in-law Julie always finds good lodging.

     Some of us took a horse ride through Garden of the Gods on Friday afternoon.

    It was ok to have the horse doing the walking.  All we had to do was hang on.  Friday evening we all attended a melodrama at a dinner theater in Manitou.

    Saturday morning, some of us took “the cog” to “the top of the mountain blue”, Pikes Peak.

     Political note:  The quarrel over what is causing the globe to warm is chaff.  We need to clean the atmosphere, regardless of whether the greenhouse effect is legitimate or not.  When I was a kid fifty-plus years ago, you could see clearly to the horizon where the earth curves beyond sight.  Not any more.  The permanent haze in the atmosphere limits the view to a few miles (the cog rail line is a little over eight miles long), not the hundred miles of yore.  The permanent haze limited the view from Mesa Verde the last time I was there, too.  This here is Colorado, not Los Angeles or Chicago or Mexico City or Shanghai or any of them places.

    Down from the Peak, we had lunch at a brewery.  Saturday afternoon was time to laze around and enjoy the beautiful day.  Following supper, a spirited game of Farkle happened.  A few tunes on guitars and fiddle by the siblings drove the in-laws to their beds.

  Breakfast Sunday morning, pack up and depart.  We took the Black Forest Road to gawk at the “burn scar”.  We saw denuded tree trunks standing black against the blue sky.  A lot of the ground vegetation has recovered, although there are still many bare slopes that have nothing to hold the rain water.  We saw very few charred remains of houses.  Most along our route have been cleaned up, leaving a vacant lot beneath the charred trees where somebody’s beautiful home once stood.

     Home to the planes where I can get back to wheat planting.  But wait!  It’s raining again.  Dang!  No wheat planting this week.  And what I have planted will probably have to be redone (the reason "somebody" interfered and wouldn't let me get started on Wednesday afternoon) .  And the neighbors all have their hay and prozo millet windrowed and some corn to harvest. 

   What a country!  Always does just the wrong thing.  Last June and July when we needed the moisture it couldn’t squeeze out a drop.  Now just look at it when folks have work to do!

     Woops.  The farmer in me is coming out again.  We need all the moisture we can get.  Maybe I won’t lose so many trees.  I won’t have to water them for while any way.  The subsoil needs a good recharging and. . . .

      

Rain!

     A local joke says, “That time it rained forty days and forty nights, Karval got an inch and a half.”

     Nobody is laughing about flood jokes in Northern Colorado and the Front Range right now as the area tries to recover from flood damage and it is still raining.  However, here is what my rain gauges say:

     Just about an inch and a half in the cheap (make that ‘free’) gauge.  The inner tube of the fancy gauge equals one inch.  You empty the inner tube and pour in the spill-over to get an accurate measure.  I haven’t done that yet, but it will be in the range of an inch and a half.  That is cumulative from last Wednesday.

     We made a trip to Ogallala, Nebraska Saturday.  We supped in Sterling where we watched the weather radar blasting once again Northern Colorado.  The radio warned of road closures and evacuations in Fort Morgan due to flooding of the Platte, soon to reach Brush and then Sterling.

    It was a bit unnerving as we left Sterling in the dark with periods of heavy rain, but we reached Brush well ahead of the high water and came south.  The farther south we got, the lighter the rain.  A few miles into Lincoln County and the roads were dry, the windshield wipers retired, and the moon went from peeking through the clouds to full frontal nudity.

    One time I told a joke to a group around the coffee pot during a slack time at the brain factory.  “What is the state tree of North Dakota?  Telephone pole.”

     Up and spake an eldern voice of the bus mechanic, formerly a travelling salesman for a local machinery exporter:  “What’s a guy from Limon, Colorado doing telling a joke like that?”

    The perfect squelch.

    My political-correctness conscience has to kick in.  I should apologize to Karval or change the proper noun to Eastern Colorado, even though that wouldn’t be quite true, either, as points east of us have had much better moisture this summer than we have.  Warning:  Telling jokes may be hazardous to your self-esteem.

     Meanwhile, back to the ranch, now if it will just dry up a bit, I can get my wheat planted.  Farmers are never satisfied. Another joke:

    The young farmer brought the doctor to attend his wife at the birth of his first child.  Making conversation, the doctor asked, “What would you like me to bring you in the way of a child?”

   The farmer said he wanted a boy, and if it could be arranged, he’d like to be sure his heart would be in farming.

     Much later, the doctor came out of the bedroom where the birth took place and said, “Well, you got both your wishes, I think.  You have a healthy son.”

    “Oh thank you doctor!”  And after he thought a while he said, “How do you know he is a farmer at heart?”

    “He’s lying on his butt screaming his head off.”

  

       

The Golf Gathering

    The day dawned hot and dry—just like every other day the past two weeks.  The preparations were nearly, not quite, done.

    The dog house was spruced up a little:

     An inveterate animal-rescuer provided an occupant for the newly-remodeled home.

      The old bushes got a little trim.

 The Friday night arrivals were perched comfortably in the shade.

      Saturday morning, Dick arrived and things began to happen.

   About 2 p. m. in the heat of the day, the game began.

     Nearly everyone was ready for a shaved-ice after a dusty hot nine holes.  A few even chose the rhubarb flavor—a syrupy wine manufactured in 1971 by Granny.

      There was time for a special presentation in front of the company—a picture that was supposed to be a Christmas present.  Oh well, better late than never.

     Everybody brought a lot of food.  Dick sweated and slaved over two grills for two hours.  And a great feast was had by all, including a few million uninvited guests—FLIES!

      The day was made special by the gathering of relatives and neighbors.  At the end of the day as it grew dark, with everyone tired and full of delicious food, the family broke out the guitars and fiddles, and Voila! Everyone went home!

    Thanks to everyone for coming and making it a memorable weekend.

August Cleanup

 

     In the years after 1972, the year Dad had his heart attack, my brothers would return to the farm on Friday before Labor Day to plant wheat.  Dad could still drive the tractor, but the physical labor of filling the drills with seed and greasing the drills was too much. 

    So on Friday afternoon late, the first son to arrive would fill the drills and begin planting.  We would take turns, someone running late into the evening (even after dark when we had a tractor with functioning lights), someone else starting early in the morning, running through the noon hour (a great break-through, because Granny ruled the noon hour and you would be at the dinner table at 12 o’clock or face dire consequences) hoping to be finished or near, by Sunday evening, maybe running a few hours Monday morning before returning to our homes and jobs.

     In the years when I took over the farm, Labor Day remained the time to plant wheat.  So the September holiday has rolled around for 2013 and the drills are sitting.  It’s too hot and a rain, if not quite mandatory, would really be nice.  A good rain would require one more tillage operation, the good old rod weeder.

     As “Hope springs eternal” I have made some moves to wake the rod weeder from 20 years of sleep.  In order to move it from its resting place, tires must be replaced.

     The best and worst tires are side by side.  The pocket gophers found the one on the left so delectable they left only the wire-filled bead.  The one on the right looked fairly good, until it was bottoms up.

     So remove the old tire and prepare the rims for “new” ones.  File, wire brush, abrasive disk on the electric drill, and finally a coat of paint and we are ready.

     Well, Mother Nature can’t be rushed, so time to do a little fall clean up while we wait for the rain.

    And the landfill pile gets bigger.

     There were a couple of other ups and downs:

      The slip-in-slip-out hitch pin has been replaced with one with threads.  The real answer is of course a good rain.  Then I won’t have to haul water to trees. 

August Heat

         

     August’s cool start gave way to more typical weather, though nothing like last summer’s record setters.  It is still pretty dry, but you wouldn’t know it from my attempt to farm.

    The biggest rain we have had has been .67” while south and east they have had multi-inch rains.   Still, I had problems getting the machine to work properly due to the wetness of the soil, combined with the residue from the grass that hasn’t decayed yet.

      When I first started, I had to stop about every 20-30 minutes to clean the grass and “mud” (not quite that wet) off the bar.  I finished Monday afternoon with one or two cleansings all afternoon.  Too early to plant wheat, so no use worrying if I have enough moisture.

     (When I was a high school kid working for a neighbor farmer, we always started planting wheat on August 21, unless that date fell on Sunday.  You would attract a lot of attention if you planted wheat that early these days.)

     On Tuesday I indulged the Goodwife’s hobby of inspecting every house that has ever been built.  We went to Colorado Springs’ Parade of Homes.  There were 35 homes on the tour, from Peyton to the hills above the city.  We toured our first house at ten o’clock, when they opened up.  We finally took a break at an Outback Steakhouse about 4:30.  We left there about 5:30, too late to view any more.  (Thank Goodness.)   

     Many of the houses we toured were rebuilds where the fire destroyed them last year.  Those all had a nice view of the flat old plain stretching out to the east with the city center tucked up against the hills.  The cheapest one probably went for $4k (most were privately owned and not for sale—mostly advertisements for various builders) and went up to a million.  None of them had a floor plan I would use, even if I could afford to.

     Thursday we headed for Kansas.  They have had more moisture.  The grass I had trimmed up three weeks ago was up pretty high again.  Problem:  Tecumseh engine on Marty J riding mower had an exhaust valve that wouldn’t close.  Four hours of troubleshooting and trying different solutions on Friday produced no results.

     It gave me an excuse to phone my old buddy Ralph, sitting in a nursing home in San Diego.  Ralph suggested liberal doses of WD-40.  Or, flood the engine cylinder with automatic transmission fluid.  The WD-40 helped.  I didn't have to go to plan B.

     The ultimate solution was a farmer one—use of bailing wire.  I threaded wire through the valve spring and made a loop around the valve stem.  I looped the other end of the wire around a piece of copper pipe.  Using the pipe as a lever, and with an assist from a nail bar hooked into the valve spring, I managed to persuade the valve to close all the way. 

      If I had to take the engine apart, I would have to get the engine out of the mower.  That would be a job.

     About 12:30 p.m. Saturday, the old engine came to life.  I spent four hours mowing in the upper ninety degree heat.  I was quite happy.  The alternative was my old Comet  lawn mower.  Or the slovenly solution of just letting Nature take its course. (My German barbershop buddy who visits occasionally would look askance at that solution.)

       Back to Colorado, where we enjoyed a round of golf in the cool evening.