Straight through Nebraska to South Dakota

On Thursday morning we packed up and headed out of Colorado driving towards Dupree, SD. We did not have work lined up there, but needed to get up in that area in order to find work where there was some winter wheat left to cut and the spring wheat would be ready in a few weeks.



Leaving Julesburg, CO


Crossing the border for CO to NE




They have had above average rainfall here too, the lake was very high.


Starting to cross a long bridge that is on top of a dam that makes Lake McConaughy out of the North Platte River.


In Nebraska we took 61 north, it is a very long ways of nothing but big rolling hills for grazing. Poor to no phone reception and when you press seek on the car radio it will just keep circling, not stopping on any stations because they just don't come in well enough. I found a station here & there that came in for a while.


After we crossed into SD, 61 turned into 73. We came over a hill and this is what we saw:


It was like a mini badlands. Only this valley looked like this, up the other side and it was back to grasslands.


It was a beautiful break in scenery!


This has got to be about the steepest hill to drive down before they would make the road curve back and forth like on a mountain.


Back up the other side.


We made it safely to Dupree around 6:30 that evening. It was a flawless move, thankfully. Great weather also. Somewhere along the way there started to be a lot more grasshoppers, so many that you could see them dead all over the road, and the vehicles! There are a lot up here in SD as well. We ate at the Ranch House Cafe for supper, it was excellent and the prices were surprisingly very affordable. The town is just inside the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Population of around 400. A tornado went through the town and surrounding area on June 16. By the looks of it not a devastating tornado, but a lot of new roofs on houses and they are repairing the school yet.

Friday morning Andy, Ben, & Chris left to go back to Julesburg to bring the other hopper bottom trailer and double header trailer here. Jon & I finished up our 2nd qtr IFTA paperwork that was due. Then Jon & Dan talked to several farmers while I went to Faith for groceries and we now have around 600 acres lined up to cut! We are so grateful for what the Lord is providing!

We had halibut for supper that my Grandpa sent along with us, we enjoyed it very much! Saturday morning we had a big breakfast of sausage and pancakes with strawberries and cool whip - yum! It is our niece(Dan's granddaughter) Natalie's 7th birthday today, and we are thinking of her all day! We just love her a bunch and hope that she has a fun day, and can't wait to celebrate with her the next time we see her!! I headed to Onida to get some spare parts to have on hand. It is the closest Case dealer and it is around 100 miles away! The drive was good, seeing some new country is always fun. We are still in mountain time where we are staying. The time changed back to Central time on my phone while I was driving over the Oahe Lake / Missouri River, right on the bridge. I thought it was kind of funny. They sampled some wheat today but found it was a bit too wet yet, so hopefully tomorrow it will be dry enough to get rolling.

Back to CO

As Jon & I were driving back to Julesburg, CO on Monday afternoon we basically drove into this storm in the middle of SD. We had been on I-90, then cut down to 44 I believe so we could get to 83 that goes through Nebraska. Anyway, after we were through Winner, SD we could see that most of the horizon in front of us was well, very dark for 7:00 in the evening. We turned on the weather station on our CB: severe thunderstorm warning, wind gusts at 70mph, and baseball size hail was going on a county to the NW of us. Well we were heading West and South, the storm was moving SE, so we were on the edge of this storm for a long time. We had wind and rain, but only heard 2 small hail hit the truck thankfully. Jon was driving hard to get out of its path. I am more aware now that out-running a big storm out here is not as easy as one would think. Partly because there just aren't as many roads as we are used to back home! There was pretty much nothing out in that area, ranches and pasture, puny 1-horse towns. We made it just fine though and got to the camper a little after midnight.




We are all done combining in this area now. The fields ranged from 23-48 bushels per acre here that we did. Nice fields and farmers. Combines and trucks are all washed off and everything is loaded up. Jon was out most of the day looking for wheat to cut. I am not familiar with this town yet as I left before we started combining here. So I spent the day finding (and doing business at) the Napa, laundromat, car wash, post office, ATM, and grocery store. Ya know how MN is good about posting the population on the town signs? Well OK, KS, & CO don't seem to do that as much. CO will more likely have the elevation on the sign. So I can't say for sure how big or small the town is, I would say maybe Waterville size. It's a nice little town. Apparantly it was a stop along the Pony Express. Not sure if we'll be moving tomorrow or not for a few days.

Heading out once again

Well the wedding weekend is over. We had a fun time, the wedding was beautiful and now it is time to hit the road once again. We have a whole pile of food to load up and take out along with all our clothes once again which we had brought home to wash (the machine at home doesn't take quarters!) Andy & Dan left earlier this morning in the Tauras, we got the tranny re-built while I was home last week so it should be good to go for a long time. Jon has to locate a couple parts for the semis and so we can't leave until he can get ahold of the places to see if they are in stock.
Here are some pictures of the past week:
Laura and I spent a couple days weeding the gardens at mom's...

Fun time decorating the hall for the reception :)


The circus is coming! No, wait, Danny & Tricia's wedding getting setup on the hill!

The hay bale setup crew


Brothers: Jon & Danny

Family on the Melchert side.

Jon thought it was good to be home for a few days too - look at all this food!

The rest of the crew out in N.East CO are done with the 1400 or so acres, all the fields were within 10 miles of each other, so not a lot of moving which was nice. Some hauling grain to the farmers bins. When we get out there we'll get all the billing straightened out and settled up. From there we don't have any acres lined up just yet, so we'll be doing some driving, talking, and advertising again. Hope we'll be in the right places at the right times again.

It was so nice to come home for a few days and be a part of the wedding festivities. It was good to get re-charged for the 2nd 1/2 of the summer on the wheat harvest. Being around all of our loving family and friends whether it be in blood and guts splattered clothes butchering chickens or cleaned up and in a dress at a wedding has been just wonderful. I have always felt thankful for what I have, but even more so now I am just thankful for where I live and all of the great people in my life.

Hurry up and wait

We finished up the 360 acre job by Wakeeney, KS on Saturday July 3rd. The machinery was loaded up and left at the local co-op. We hooked onto the camper and went back to Dighton, KS to our friend Chad's farm. He had invited us over for the 4th of July weekend since we had that job done and didn't have another one to rush off to. He grilled us steak for supper,and it was about the best I've ever had! The next day was the 4th and the guys had the Tauras in about a million pieces in Chad's shop, so they worked on putting that all back together. It was a hard day for me as I really missed being at our North Morristown 4th of July Celebration and didn't really have a whole lot to keep my mind off of it besides finishing up the invoice. I went for a long walk / jog, I think it was around 7 miles, which helped and I enjoyed thoroughly. It was overcast that day so it wasn't so blasted hot. The night before Chad had told us they have some big cats (cougers and bobcats) in the area, but they are seldom seen. They live on a gravel road, and I only went by 1 other house while I was out, and that had been abandoned years ago. only 4 vehicles and 1 tractor went by the whole time I was on the road. I saw several jackrabbits though, they are so neat. Imagine a kangaroo and bunny rabbit put together. Big critters! The land is pretty flat where Chad lives and you can see forever, the sky is so big. That night we went into town with Chad's family to a party. The town is about the size of Morristown, and everyone was lighting off fireworks, it was nuts! Parties everywhere and explosives going off in the middle of most every street, even little kids lighting off stuff, I don't know how the ER wasn't packed with people missing eyeballs and fingers.....there was a haze over the town from all the smoke and it smelled like sulfur. It made me miss Tim's great fireworks display at North Morristown all the more, it is so much better!!!

Monday the 5th:
Jon & I (along with 2 other guys that have really small harvest crews like us) loaded up in Chad's vehicle and set off on a 3 day tour to advertise, meet people, and try to get more work. We went all over the NE 1/4 of Colorado and and western 1/3 of Nebraska leaving business cards at elevators, putting in newspaper ads, and visiting with farmers when possible. The wheat out there is pretty much all kind of green yet, some a week out yet. Some areas had standing water and others had some hail damage, but overall the wheat looked really good. It was a fun trip, but a LOT of riding in the vehicle. Some highlights were seeing (2) 3-legged dogs, seeing the huge railyard in Alliance, NE (headqtrs for BNSF) it was like Thomas the Train live, and stopping at Fort Robinson for a buffalo burger. While we were gone doing that for 3 days the other guys moved all the machinery up to Julesburg, CO. We landed a job there but it wasn't going to be ready to harvest for another week, so there was no hurry. The owners of the RV park there have wheat and their cutters had to leave so they asked us if we could take over, Yes!! So there is 1000-1500 acres to cut in that area, they combined a sample today but it was still around 19% moisture, it needs to get down to 12% and under, so it may be a couple days yet.

Chris had a friends wedding this past Friday and Ron was in a wedding on Saturday the 10th, they were going to head home on thursday the 8th and I was gonna go home also and stay home until Danny's wedding on the 17th. Well we wanted to head out early in the morning, but of course there was more trouble with the Tauras, they fixed on it some more and we were able to head out at 1:30 in the afternoon. We weren't even sure if it would make it so we looked into renting a car, taking a bus, catching a plane, buying a different car....but we ended up taking the Tauras. It was still not shifting quite right and the RPM's would get really high in the lower gears, but once we got on the freeway and up to speed it ran like a charm. So we only stopped 3 times on the way home for gas and to switch drivers. I got home a little before 2am. Home sweet home!! It felt good to come home for a little bit. I could hardly sleep though because there is so much here I want to get done. 5+ weeks of mail to go through and bills to pay, lawn to clean up, gardens to weed, veggies to pick!, chickens to butcher, possibly hay and straw to work on if the weather permits, people to see, IFTA qtrly taxes to figure out, and a wedding to help with. I am excited to be home and am getting re-charged and ready to go back out, a little break from all those guys is kind of nice though, hehe :) I hear they miss my cooking already, must be getting sick of bread and water!

Rattler!

We were driving out to the field yesterday morning when we saw a snake on the side of the road. The guys wanted to go see it, so we backed up and went to see what kind it was. It was a rattlesnake! Oh dear... Ben grabbed the bat (thanks Danny!) out of the truck and was gonna get himself a rattler....he kind of chickened out when he got up to it, so Jon grabbed the bat, Andy got the snake to look his direction, Jon snuck up behind it, and clubbed it on the head!


rattlesnake coiled up

getting ready to strike, scary!!

dead rattler

good teamwork on the 1st rattlesnake hunt!

of course we are going to keep it...

When Andy set it down, the back 2/3 of it was still wiggling all around! That evening when we got back they cut the rattle off and skinned it.

Grandma & Grandpa came to visit!

My Grandma & Grandpa Bosacker came to visit us for a few days this week! They got here Tuesday evening and headed home Friday morning. We all liked having them visit, and some new faces to see :) Grandpa enjoyed riding in the combines and getting to visit with Dan & Jon. I appreciated having Grandma here, it was so good to see her! It was nice to have another car here too, since ours isn't quite fixed yet. We even had time on Thursday night to play some cribbage with them! Grandma & I won overall :) we won 3 games, the guys only won 2.


Glad the weather was good and we were in the field when Grandpa & Grandma came to visit!

Andy getting ready to haul a load to town.

Grandpa riding with Jon

We brought lunch to the field, hotdogs from home! And Grandma's famous monster cookies, what a treat!

Grandpa loves being out in the field!

Holly, Andy, and Chris


Grandpa riding with Dan.


Piling grain outside the elevators, since the bins / silos are full. They are some MASSIVE piles, it is crazy to see. Not sure how long they sit there, I wouldn't think too long. I guess they put a huge tarp over it if it rains, I would think that would be a difficult task!

It was a pretty good week

Things have been going pretty good this week, combining some nice wheat, good weather (upper 80's, - mid 90's).


a Gleaner graveyard

not too often you see the fields higher than the road! leads to some nasty washouts.


some nicer flat fields!



Ben always complains about our Red combines, well here you go Ben, we'll get you this green machine.

Things were going good, until Ben hit a deer. We'll get it all fixed up good as new though.


There were a lot of deer out that night, we saw several on the way back to the camper. I hit a coon even. The wind had died down and the skeeters were out in full force for blood.