The Plowman's Folly: October 2005

There is peace in the valley again

So I am now done with both corn and soybean harvest, and it has been a pretty hectic few weeks. So let's start with my harrowing trip of near death. A few saturday's ago I went down to sipes to pick up some seed wheat. We had 244 50 pound bags to pick up, and for some reason we decided we could get it in one trip. Let's see 244x50= way way overloaded. Back in school I would haul seed home on the weekends from Manhappenin' in iggy. The first time I did so we were trying to figure how much I could haul and I found in the Owner's manual how much it could carry. When I told dad the number he said "well, you can double that." This gives you some idea of why I was trying to get all of the seed in one load.

Anyways, to make a long story short(er) We got the trailer loaded poorly at sipes, (too much in the back) and so the first hill I came too (there are actually 3 "hills" between here and sipes, which is southwest of Ulysses and about 5 miles from CO) the trailer began to violently fishtail and I nearly wrecked and lost 44 bags in the process. It was getting on towards dark by the time I got the bags rearranged on the trailer in a semi-stable manner and so I just took the trailer back to sipes and left it there.

On monday I went back to sipes to get about half the load and while I was getting de-loaded and reloaded one of their employees explained to me my problem. " The problem," he said " is that you're driving a half-ton. You need to get a truck with some @#$%ing hair on its *ss." He then proceeded to tell me of how he had convinced his father to buy him a truck with some "@#$%ing hair on its *ss," giving me technical details about the engine size, transmission, differential etc. etc. (I did not mention to him the technical specs of the truck I was driving so as not to embarrass him.) Anyway, now I know that next time I buy a truck, I should look at it's *ss to see if it has @#$%ing hair.

I found out that it was a good thing that I had left the trailer there when, about five miles west of old Sante Fe, the wheel became unattached from the trailer.

My attempt to make one trip to sipes ended up costing me two more trips...

We cut corn all that week and it went really good. The field over east made 244, which for you uninitiated, is about halfway between "That's a really good field of corn" and "You sir, are a liar." So my averaged yield for this year ended up at 228, which is 10 bushels higher than my previos best yield for a singe field.

So jay put up this big huge taj ma corn that will hold 1.5 million bu under a tarp. they got it finishe like on friday and then they were slowly filling it with corn. When I went there on monday with my final two loads of corn they were sitting around waiting for the wind to die down, so as to not stress out the tarp. On tuesday we started on soybeans and they were still waiting on the wind. I ended up bringing in a load late that night and lo and behold they were loading corn ito the tarp. I found this to be quite interesting, as the wind actually picked up on tuesday night from it's previous levels. Anyways, when I went in with a load wednesday morning, there was a big huge hole in the tarp.

The soybeans did real good too. I had more beans off the field than I did two years ago on the same field, but the yield was actually slightly less... thank you, Farm Service Agency.

So I've been taking it pretty easy since then, trying to get ready for milo and making my third trip to sipes for seed. Yesterday it rained all day, so I am very relaxed now.

Fall (post corn harvest) is my favorite time of year.