Here we are again in Pond Creek

We have now moved up from Southern Oklahoma to Northern Oklahoma. I tried to update the blog since we moved but the signal has been too poor for my internet connection to hold very long. So today after dropping lunch off at the field I buzzed down to the Enid, OK library (about 30 minutes south of us) to get the blog updated and catch up on emails. It has been a week since the last post and I have a lot of pictures so this will be a long one! Let me go back to last week and get you caught up....

We had to take pictures of the Texas border signs, since we saw them so often for a while there.

A nice evening in the field.

Dan got a hair cut before going to the field one morning. Most of the rest of the guys got haircuts on this past Sunday night.

On Tuesday morning Marg & I went to see one of the farmers load cattle. There were cattle trailers lined all up the hill ready to load!

Todd along with his 2 boys, neighbors, and some day workers rounded all the steers up from the big pasture to the corral.

Todd's 2 boys along with a neighbor boy helping out. I asked them what time they had gotten up that morning. 4am they said! And they want to be out there helping, they get upset if their Dad leaves without them in the morning their Grandpa said.

Our clothesline at our 1st stop! It saved a lot of money, here in Pond Creek there isn't an area to hang up a clothesline. When it is good weather and the guys are all out in the fields I do all the laundry. When we have rain days the guys will do their own laundry, we haven't had any rain days yet..... I do 12-15 loads of clothes every 5-6 days depending on size of the washers. Then I do towels and sheets another day.

Holly working on getting the paperwork done for the farmers. Our guys give me the grain cart scale logs, the truck logs, and the elevator tickets so that I can sort out all the bushels per field to get the bushels per acre. The farmers really appreciate getting the sheet from us that have the breakdown of how each field performed. We cut 2640 acres and the overall averge was 39.85 bu/acre in Southern Oklahoma. There were fields with averages up to 57 bu/acre, but there were a lot in the 30 bu/acre range as well.

Supper in the field - grilled brats, beans, chips, watermelon, brownies and ice cream.

All 4 combines working - its a beautiful thing!

Lt Dan, Jon, and Andy looking spiffy for work!

The stop signs are really short in the country here, not sure why.

A VERY WINDY day.

Jon, Winston, & Lt. Dan

I love this picture

Dan & Jake - these guys are always so positive, we really appreciate their good attitudes!

Jacob! Jon & I met up with all the farmers to settle up on Thursday and Friday morning that we cut for in S. Oklahoma. The guys loaded up the machinery and we were leaving by about noon on Friday the 25th to head up to Pond Creek, OK. It was about 5 hours away. When we got there some of the guys were able to start combining right away. The other guys helped me at the RV park to get hooked up. It is much fuller than last year, there were some harvesters there already and several people that work with the oil drilling. We barely fit our 2 campers in. Then we had some problems with the hookups, some of the electrical hookups didn't work. Luckily Lt. Dan worked in construction for a while and was able to redo them so they worked for us! After 2 hours of messing around with everything we were finally completely hooked up. We are VERY close to several other campers.....and a railroad track. It goes by several times each day and a couple times at night. There are roads a block on either side of the campers which means they have to blow the horns on either side of us as well, and it is LOUD! Some of the guys went to bed early since they were going back for the 3rd and 4th combines the next day. On Saturday morning at 2am Andy, Lt. Dan, Charlie, and Jake got up to head back south to get the other combines and heads. They got back in the early afternoon. Jake's mom Cindy, brother Erich, and uncle Paul came to visit us that weekend as well! They got to the camper about noon on Saturday. When we went out to the field Erich got right to unchaining the combines from the trailers that had just rolled in. We didn't even ask him to!

Erich helped Charlie & Andy get the 2nd air conditioner installed in our camper. Jake's family enjoyed riding with everyone in the combines and tractor and we really enjoyed their company! On Sunday 1/2 of us wanted to go to church and the other 1/2 of the guys said they would just go out to the field to get started. The farmer we cut for now has 1 combine that he uses along with us. He had a bearing go out and there were some sparks going out the rear of his combine which started some straw on fire. He shut if off and got out of the way as did all of our guys and equipment. It was again very windy and the straw burns so quickly, but the fire department got there very quickly. It ended up that only straw burned (the wheat was already combined in that area) and it burned towards a corn field which of course is still green so luckily it stopped there. Cindy was riding along with Jake and later told me about the fire. She said it was good we were in church praying at the time, it could have been a whole lot worse but that she was impressed with how everyone handled it. There have been some storms go by us. We have seen some impressive clouds but have not had rain yet. There are chances of storms for us tonight and tomorrow I believe. Jon was interviewed today by Jerry from KDHL radio back home for updates on the wheat harvest. I think it will air tomorrow! Then later today a reporter from either a radio station or some kind of print media in Nebraska called Jon for an update as well. It was exciting. Well I sure feel good about finally being able to update the blog, now I better get back to grill chicken for supper.