September 2010, Part II.

September continued.
I took the 8100 to the Gray havens to put down some fertilizer. Before I left the farm though, I rinsed out some empty chemical jugs into the tank so I could spray it out on the wheat stubble. I didn't get very far before I lost all my pressure. My filter was all gunked up... but with what?

And there, in the puddle left when I opened the filter I saw a tiny scrap of paper.

It took a long time and many stops to clean out the filter to empty the tanks and find the culprit: A label had come off of one of the jugs and into the spray tank. :/

I was able to fish it out with the big wrench I keep in the tractor and so put down my fertilizer.


The slight dip in the horizon here is a branch of the Santa Fe Trail.

Now we just need a nice rain to wash it in...

Anna decided to start her political career by running for student council representative. Here is her very first political speech:

(Shockingly, she did not win. Maybe next year...)

Then we took the combine up to the airport to cut George's beans.

It was fun to watch all of the planes.

We managed to slug the combine, though.

These soybeans were really a casualty of the dry summer. George flood irrigates, and without help from a decent rain every now and then, just couldn't keep up. The result was pretty weedy, thin soybeans with a lot of green patches. It was pretty slow going, and really hard on the combine.
A couple of days later I managed to ruin the return elevator drive chain.
We worked for a long time with the new chain before Dad suggested we go buy a chain breaker. I thought that maybe the fact that they make a tool for this sort of thing might have been something Dad might have mentioned sometime during the last ten years, instead of keeping it a secret. $15 and 30 seconds later...

I stayed out pretty late that night filling up the truck. They even turned the runway lights on so I could find the truck.

The airport was real pretty at night.

The next day was long and miserable as I fought a field full of Russian Thistles and listened to the dullest football game ever played. K-State ended up not losing to UCF, but they certainly did not win.

At least I had the planes to keep me company.

I was pretty happy to get that particular field done and move to something a little combine friendlier.

Then I took the combine home Sunday afternoon.

So I could start on my own beans at home.

They did pretty good.




Except the chlorotic spots.

The combine continued to fall apart, one piece at a time.

And when we were done with the beans we started in on the corn.