Thursday & Friday of last week

Let's see....
Thursday of last week was Grandma & Grandpa's last day with us, luckily the weather was good and the wheat was gonna be good to go around noon. We ate a big, late breakfast of eggs and toast so we wouldn't have to stop for lunch. Grandma came with me to Faith (25 miles west) to get a bunch of groceries (we go through LOTS of food here!) By the time we got back the combines were rolling, so I dropped her off at the field to ride with Jon. I went back to the camper and unpacked the groceries and started supper. I grilled burgers for an early supper around 4:30 so Grandma & Grandpa could eat before they headed home. We had started combining with a farmer before all the rain on a big field but the wheat was mostly laying down. The farmer has thousands of acres, and he has 2 almost new combines, but he hires a little help with the wheat. So it was us and then a neighbor of his with 1 combine helping him. We finished that field and then started for the next field. All 5 combines, 2 grain carts, 4 semis, and a few pickup trucks paraded 20 or more miles on back gravel roads to his next field of winter wheat. We got a good start on that field and they quit around dark or a little after I think.

Then on Friday I did a bunch of laundry in the morning. I met a nice girl a couple years younger than me at the laundromat. She was also on a harvest crew. Her Dad's, and he's been doing this for 25+ years she said. She worked the summers in high school for him too she said. Right now she is saving up money to go to college at WYO-Tech I believe. She wants to be an automotive air-brush paint specialist or whatever that would be called. Their crew is the same size as us, run Gleaners, and are from around Bismark. It was fun to swap stories and I think we both enjoyed each others company being the only girl on each crew.

After I folded the clothes and got back to the camper I quickly made the guys sandwiches and headed to the field, then took the truck back to town for more fuel for the combines and tractor. After that I drove our tractor and grain cart the rest of the day till 10pm or so. The farmer was 1 guy short today so Chris was driving his tractor and grain cart (which is 1000 bushel, twice the size of ours!) and I took over driving our grain cart. The farmer said Chris was doing a great job and that made him feel really good and us too, the farmer and his family are really nice. It was a non-stop day in the field with the 5 combines on that long 700 acre field. The 4 semi drivers didn't have any wait time that day! Then around sunset a storm was quickly rolling in. It clouded up to both the north and south of us, but there was a clear spot in the middle, right over the field. There was a lot of lightning, it was a spectacular show, but too close for comfort at the end. We were spared of rain that night though, I believe you got that rain at home Saturday morning. It was a fun day and everything went really well.