day by day

Please excuse me if this is a little incoherent today.  I didn't want to leave this post too long - I'll probably end up forgetting half of what I want to say by the end of the post, but at least some of this stuff will be down for posterity.

We have been combining more or less non stop since my last post. It is always an interesting experience, this year is no exception.


Day one - do I remember how to do this?  What did I bring to the combine last year to make this more comfortable?  Combine until eleven and happily go home to bed.


Day two - do I remember how to fix this?  Always have a few glitches out there - I'm pretty sure that was the day that I got to get intimate with the rotor (Dale plugged the combine) again.  Combine until 2.  Sleepy, but ok.


Day three - finish the first field.  Yay!  Move on to the next half section right at dusk.  I notice that we do that a lot.  Keep on combining - I think we went until midnight or so.


Day four - I actually went back to bed.  For the first time in my memory, I got up, said bye to the kids and then went back to bed.  Only to be woken up by a grain buyer who wanted a meeting, at my kitchen table, 3 minutes after he phoned.  Combined until twelve thirty, when it drizzled.  Trouble falling asleep, unfortunately - we had planned to go a bit longer.


Day five - Kids came for a combine ride!  That is always fun.  Finished the second field, moved onto the next one and...the combine dies.  Like dead.  Won't start.  I sat in the dark for a while waiting for Dale to come, started it, it moved 25 feet and died again.  Eventually we got the mechanic out - we had killed the alternator.  Expensive, but easy to fix.


Day six - finished the little field we had started and went to move into the wheat.  That involves a bit of adjustment...and we were doing it, of course, at dusk.  The wheat ended up still being too tough (wet), so we moved back into the canola - undoing all the adjustments.  And continued on until two.


Day seven.  Finished up that canola - it was Norm's, so he's done harvest.  Moved to the next canola field, at dusk.  Again.  Tougher going there - the canola is harder to put through and Dale was trucking it away, so it was a long haul.  Quit round about one, when I was only able to drive about 2 miles per hour to get the crop into the machine.


Day eight - a few hours of canola and then back to wheat.  The sample wasn't coming out right, so Dale made adjustments.  For 3 hours.  And still wasn't happy, so he went to buy a new part for the combine that is supposed to make it better.  Somehow managed to get a bin of wheat finished...about one thirty.


Day nine - well, it has just started.  I have done a load of laundry, gone to get chemical, met with a chemical rep about some chemical trials that we did this year and have mostly been trying to figure out why I'm so tired.  Dale finished filling a bin, moved the truck, tried to put the new part in the combine (but has quit trying as it will involve much drilling and we don't have time for that) and now he's gone to combine the plots.  They are canola variety trials - he'll do those up and then I'll be back into the wheat again.  

Oh yeah, and Auntie Pat and her sister Joan are due to arrive in a few hours - I'll try to squeeze in a visit over suppertime.  The house will be how it is, just hope that we're able to keep everything else together until then.