Are You Kidding Me?

This has been said and thought a lot this week. After a perfect trip down here, things started to fall apart in short order on Monday afternoon. After lunch on Monday the guys all went back to the field to take a moisture sample. It was 12.4% so that was good enough to keep on combining, so Marg & I went out to the field. We saw this steer on the road.

Getting the machinery ready to roll in the field.

Notice how clean and red the combine is???

Lt. Dan, Jacob, & Caleb adding oil to the head and getting it ready.

2 combines start to open up the field while the others get hooked up.

The farmers son and a few of our guys watch the first round.

This was a longer, more narrow field, so we "cut" the field into smaller sections, so the grain cart doesn't have such a big area to cover.

Caleb - riding with Jon - getting familiar with this combine. Then Jon jumped out to deal with problems on 2 of the heads. Holly jumped in with Caleb to ride with him until he got more familiar with everything, he was doing a fine job though. Just a lot of things to know and remember in there.

Jon, assessing this head. Apparently one of the fingers broke off and was clanging around and the shaft in the auger was bent I think. The other head had a metal plate break off or crack on the end and needed to be welded. No problem, we have a welder along! But....we forgot the welding cables at the farm....are you kidding me?? Oh well, there was a farmer only a quarter mile up the road who's welder we could use. The head was already on the combine though and down here we can't get in or out of most fields because of the fences, so we have to take the heads off every time we move to another field, or in this case to go to the farmers yard. So load it back on the trailer and haul it up there. Not a big deal, just takes more time is all. I think they had to do some welding on this head as well.

One of the farmers and his wife were in the field for a while and they brought their dog, Chin Chin along. She was busy catching bugs and then Dan thought she looked thirsty so he offered her some water. Chin Chin is actually drinking out of the cap, but you can't tell very well in the picture. The combine that Andy was driving has a re-built engine in it. Watching it go around the field, we were noticing it puff out big clouds of black smoke and make a chugging noise every couple minutes or less even. Andy said it was running fine other than that so he just slowed the rpms down a little and it puffed black smoke less often at least. But that was going to need to be looked at very soon. Marg & I went back to the camper to make supper, the guys ate when they came in from the field, it was a late supper, eating about 9:30, it usually doesn't get that late to eat but obviously things weren't falling into place very well on Monday. Charlie & Kyle got to the camper first, a little after 9pm, in a rush, saying they needed to eat and shower quickly as they had to drive to Greenville, TX to get parts for one of the heads. So they were on the road by 9:45 or around there. It is a 2.5 hour drive to Greenville from here. That was Monday. On to Tuesday, May 15th. It was a heavy dew this morning so they got the 2 broken heads fixed and 3 of the combines ready for when it was dry enough. We ate an early lunch and they were able to start combining with 3 machines around 11:30 or noon. Andy, Caleb, and Kyle started off combining with Jacob I believe driving grain cart. Winston and Charlie drove trucks and Lt. Dan was helping Jon fix things.

2 service techs from the Case dealer came out to see what they could find on the combine that was puffing black smoke. Jon and our crew were thinking it was the fuel injectors. The techs hooked up thier computer to the combine and it did not find anything, so they also thought it was the injectors, but they did not have any with them, nor did their store in Wichita Falls have that kind in stock. The closest place that had them in stock was the warehouse in Greenville, TX. Are you kidding me? While Jon and the techs were looking at that combine, the combine that Caleb was driving just stopped suddenly. It wouldn't go forward or backwards. He took it out of gear and shifted it back into gear, it still wouldn't move. Jon & the techs went over to look at that combine. Well it seems like the tranny is out they thought......I know what you are thinking, are you kidding me? Lieutenant Dan says to me,"I can't believe all of these things are breaking. You can expect some things, but this is just one after another, and big breakdowns too." Yes it certainly is, and it deflates the spirit pretty quickly too.

Marg is talking to one of the farmers. We have been doing a lot of apologizing these past few days to the farmers for all of these hold ups and breakdowns. But they have been nothing but exceedingly gracious and encouraging. Todd just asks what he can help with and pitches right in. Raesh said to me,"You couldn't pay me to own a combine,I wouldn't want to deal with all those moving parts." and "If it was easy everyone would be custom harvesting and I would have harvesters knocking my door down to cut my wheat, but that isn't the case." We are so thankful for how wonderful these people are.

The 2 lone moving combines. But at least there ARE 2 moving combines!

Caleb and Lt. Dan have been tearing into the 2 down combines with Jon.

Jon, on the phone in his office trying to locate parts. The few case dealerships within 2 hours of us don't have what we need. And there are the Pro-Harvest trailers around, but they don't have the parts we need either, apparently our combines are too old....all four of them are from years 2003-2006. These combines are newer than all of our cars and trucks. So Marg & Holly got some fast food from Sonic for the guys and headed to Greenville, TX. We left at 6pm. It is about 2 and a 1/2 hours, but there was considerable road construction that slowed us down. We got there, got the parts, took a 30 minute detour, re-routed to 380 and got back to the camper at about 1:00am.

This restaurant made us laugh.

As did this sign. On the way through Bowie, TX headed back to the camper we saw 3 squad cars had a small pickup pulled over, they had the driver out, handcuffed, and were searching his truck. Wednesday morning came too fast. The guys headed out to the field and shortly thereafter Jon called me to give me some bad news. The fuel injectors that we picked up only hours before were the wrong ones. The warehouse had them ready for us, and even if we had opened the boxes we wouldn't have known they were the wrong ones anyways. Someone would have to go back there to get the correct ones. I almost cried. He offered if I wanted some of the guys to go instead, but I said they are more help to him with working on the machines than I am, so we will go back. As annoying as it is that we had to go back (3 trips in 3 days!) the worse thing is that the combine is still sitting idle. We packed a cooler with sandwich fixings to drop off at the field for the guys' lunch since we would be gone and headed back down the same roads we had just traveled a few hours ago. Jon, Lt. Dan, and Caleb were going to work as fast as they could on the other down combine to see if it really was the tranny or other parts so that when we were in Greenville we could hopefully get those parts too. After a couple hours Jon called that they were able to find the problem and he called in the parts. It was not the whole tranny! We got back with the parts in the early afternoon, sometimes thereafter we had 3 out of 4 combines running! Marg & I went back to start supper. Dan Melchert pulled in with Jon's car around 5:00 that evening, planting is finished! We made 4 batches of biscuits from scratch and sausage gravy to go with them. Loaded everything up and headed out to the field. When Jacob saw what was for supper he exclaimed,"I never thought we'd have biscuits and gravy in the field! maybe in the camper but not out here!" a little later Kyle walked up and said," I LOVE biscuits!!" Caleb said, "I will eat anything that anyone brings me." It felt so good to laugh that evening after the frustrating couple of days we had. I had intentions of getting to bed early that night, but by the time we got back to the camper, did all the dishes, and showered I think it was almost midnight by the time my head hit the pillow.

Jon, Lt. Dan, and Caleb You can't tell they were working hard, can you? Thursday, May 17th. Jon, Dan and Jacob worked on getting the old injectors out of the combine so they could put the new ones in. It was not going so well, they consulted with several people they knew until I think they unhooked some lines and they popped right out. Andy woke up in the middle of the night with a lot of pain in his eye. Regular eye drops made that eye burn. So he looked up some eye doctors in a town about a half hour away and Marg took him in right away for a 9:00 appointment. Holly stayed back at the camper and did 15 loads of laundry. This place is great because there is a laundromat in this RV park, the washers are kind of small, but I can walk there and not have to load up the car at least. Another bonus is that there are some big trees here too so we have 4 lines hung to dry clothes! It is about 100 steps for me from the washers to our clothesline. I only did the clothes and plan to do towels tomorrow. I hung everything out except for socks and underwear, there was a great breeze too so it dried quickly. I only had to pay for 3 loads in the dryers for the small stuff. It saved me $20 on drying at least. Andy & Marg got back around 10:30 I think. He got 2 bottles of drops for his eye. It turned out to be a viral infection.

Andy's eye is very sensitive to light right now and can't wear his contacts so he twisty tied his glasses and sunglasses together. Its a nice look I think, and he might get better reception with those antennas. We made BBQ pork sandwiches for lunch and took everything out to the field. Jon drove the 4th combine with the new injectors to the field we had moved too, YEAY!! Way to go Melchert Harvesting Pit Crew! You guys rock.

There is a Killdeer nest with 4 eggs in it only a few feet from the boys' camper. It is right on the crushed tar in the hot sun. I almost stepped on it but the mother bird came after me to warn me. I put 2 pails on either side of the nest they don't get stepped on or driven on. Hopefully they hatch soon! For Thursday's supper we made spaghetti and garlic bread. This time on our way to the field their were 2 steers in the road! 2 small turtles crossing the road and we saw a snake on the way to and from the field. Never know what you will see here.

Moving machinery to the next field.

This white truck pulled up by us and talked with Todd for a bit. I guess the 2 guys that were in the truck are on the show "Mudcats" and its filmed not far from here. They do noodling, but I have not seen that show at all, just what Todd told us.

The Dans. Young Dan opened his supper container and looked at the other guys' containers and said, "I like it that you don't discriminate food portions based on the size of the person, we all get equal amounts!" He keeps us laughing!