If you wish for 1 rain day you may get 5.....

We are still stationed in Pond Creek, OK and things have been fine lately. Since my last post we have had more rain days than combining days. If I remember right it started raining Tuesday evening. Then it rained on and off all the way through Sunday morning. There were a couple afternoons that it dried enough to combine for a couple hours but there haven't been any full days of combining since Tuesday. At first it was nice, everyone could sleep in and then just watch movies or do whatever they wanted for a day, but not long after that people were starting to get antsy. So the guys got to do their own laundry one of the days and other small jobs like polishing aluminum rims on the truck, putting new weather stripping on the grain trucks boxes, cleaning out all of the trucks really well, but still a LOT of time for watching movies and placing coins on the railroad tracks to see if they would get flattened. And the coins that didn't vibrate off the tracks did indeed get flattened almost paper thin. Of the storms that went through only 2 turned out to be a "storms", the others were just lite rains. The first storm was just solid red north of us and it was moving almost directly south quite slowly, it was kind of scary but there was no damage to anything in town or close to us. It got really windy was all, we are pretty crammed in protected where we are. This is looking at our campers from the north and the strong wind that night was also from the north so we were safe, if it would have been from the east or west we may have toppled over like dominoes.... Our camper is the Coachman and the other camper behind the small 5th wheel camper. We have met our neighbors in both of these that are closest to us. The ones in the 5th wheel work on or with windows I think and only stay here during the week then go home on the weekends to their families, they get up at 3am for work each day. There are 2 guys that stay in the Alumascape that lay pipe for the oil fields, they have all been nice. Looking down the driveway the other smaller campers are harvesters and the big trailer is for oil field workers, new people stay there every 7 days, I have not met or actaully even seen any of them, only their vehicles. Here's looking at the back of the campers. We are all really close together but there are only about 15 or so campers total. Most places we stay aren't this tight of spots, this has been the exception. Here is looking out the door of our camper when a train is going by. Here's Charlie on the night of the worst storm we had last week. He & Jon were the 1st ones back to the camper, Charlie quickly showered before the storm got to us then came into our camper for supper, he showed up dressed like this. He said if he was gonna die he would do so in style! He & Jon then went to the elevator to ask where the storm shelter was and then went to check it out, it was locked. They talked to someone else who said they thought someone would be down to open it up most likely, well that's good to know, wait until it gets bad, THEN unlock the storm shelter! The front of the storm with the stongest wind passed by us and then it was just rain so we never had to go to the storm shelter that night anyways, but at least we know where it is now. Here are some pictures that Cindy Velzke emailed me from their time here and some others I took last week as well: Green corn field, red dirt road, golden harvested wheat field Charlie, Winston, Kyle, and Caleb enjoying some chili and veggie noodle beef (and other misc leftovers from in the fridge)soup. This was the first rain day I believe, so when I know the guys will be at the camper to eat I make something that isn't so easy to take to the field, like soup. Dan & Jon enjoying the other, quieter camper ;) Fire in the field last Sunday The fire burnt about 5 acres of straw, not too bad at all. Erich pitching right in. Jacob & Erich, not sure why Jake isn't smiling here, he is ALWAYS smiling!!! Jon - enjoying one of the nicer moments in his field office. We have also had a couple encounters with wildlife here, not snakes - there aren't many of them around here like there are in S. OK. Young Dan was running out to ride with Caleb in the combine while he was waiting for his truck to get full, and he caught a rabbit with his bare hands while he was running across the field! He kept with him while he rode in the combine and showed it to Jon and I when he got out, then he let it go. A couple days later Charlie noticed a very young fawn in front of his combine, so he slowed down to let it move away. Well it just kept going into the wheat directly in front of Charlie so he got out and was able to go right up to it and pick it up. Not sure how long they had it then moved it out of the way. We lost around 600 acres of wheat that we cut last year that is about an hour from us, but the flip side of losing that work is that we didn't have to split up the campers and people. Plus we picked up about 1000 more acres of wheat to cut right here where we are so it worked out really well. It hasn't been as productive as the other weeks, but the guys had been calling for a rain day for a while so it is good they got it. But after a couple days and lots of bonding time, they were more than ready to get back to the field.