In Which lobiwan Makes Mediocrity a Habit.

Mechanical Mayhem! Medical Mayhem! Fire, Fire! Can you handle it?

June 2011

I doubt it.

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.

2010 Wheat Harvest Part II

So we kept on cutting...
Working all day...
Staying up late...
And starting all over in the morning.

Waiting in line...

Making repairs...

Making Levi run the combine for a little bit...

(He did a pretty nice job.)

And filling up the bins...
On the morinng of the 25th, we finally had everything hooked up and ready to go to water the 'beans, except for the engine.

We won't be needing these any more...

But this will come in handy.
Then we had to get the pipe and fittings to hook the gas to the engine...

So another full day of cutting, in which we finished the dryland, and were able to move up to our first circle of irrigated contract seed wheat. This was my plan B circle after the long wet fall of '09.

The next morning, the 26th, I fixed some drops on the sprinkler...
But we needed a different pulley on the generator.

So back to the wheat field. Anna came out to keep me company.

She's pretty good at that.

And we finished up another variety.

We took Sunday the 27th off. But we still found stuff to do:

Monday the 28th was a pretty red letter day, as we finally got the water going on the soybeans. They were pretty thirsty after nearly a month without water and several almost rains.

Then it was time to finish up the non-certified part of the circle. I went ahead and drove this load from Saturday night home on 17 tires since I couldn't get any air in this one and I didn't feel like waiting for someone to come fix it. Oh well...

And one last trip to the elevator (for now.)

And then we parked everything to wait on the last circle to dry out.

Luckily there were still things to do so I didn't get bored.

The corn was really starting to grow.
I spent the last couple of days in June spraying. Here is a nice look at the damage a single Roundup-ready kochia plant can do:

It was nice to get the milo sprayed just when it needed it, without worrying about getting back to the wheat fields.
And that was the end of June.