ND Updates, part 2

Before I get to the rest of the pictures I have for ND I realized I had some pictures left from SD that weren't on here yet!

A bull snake in the middle of the road....

Then Dan caught the snake.

Done harvesting in South Dakota and lined up for a picture.

Wheat piled up, the elevator bins ran out of room.

Steaks on the grill for supper to celebrate finishing up in SD!

Gigantic drag lines in a coal mining area in North Dakota. It is hard to grasp how big these are.

The guys having a last minute pow wow before hitting the road to ND.

Laura and I at WE-Fest!! Awesome afternoon :)

Little Big Town

Eric Church

Alabama!

Levi has been taking a lot of pictures lately, we downloaded them on our computer so I can post several of them on the blog. So the next bunch are his!

Some of the farmer's hopper bins.

Levi is driving the tractor and grain cart within inches of his brother Caleb who is driving the combine, and on top of all that he is taking a picture....

All 4 combines, moving and in 1 picture! Not always an easy thing to get as Levi knows!

We have been able to eat an earlier lunch at the camper and then the guys go out to the field. With a heavy dew that doesn't dry off quickly, combining usually starts after lunch in this area. I like it that I only have to take one meal out to the field per day though.

Prairie chicken by the tractor. Thanks for all of the great pictures Levi!

Here's a picture of me - just for Jodi! Well my favorite thing to do is washing several guys stinky clothes. Favorite place is in the camper doing dishes and favorite food is when we go out to eat. I may have been a bit sarcastic there. There are lots of good memories from this summer as well as the past 2 and I try to document most all of them. I have really enjoyed getting to see so much more of the country than most people will ever get to. I like that we have gotten to know people from all over. My brain is on overload with memories. But I always look forward to going home.

North Dakota Updates

I'm gonna start with some questions I had asked all the guys a couple days ago.

Dan Dyvig just turned 21 at the end of July. He is from Humboldt, IA but his family moved to Albert Lea when he was quite young. He farms with his Dad and is going to school to be a police officer as well. This is his first year on a wheat harvesting crew. Dan has mostly driven a straight truck for us, he drove combine or grain cart a little here and there to fill in when needed as well. Dan's favorite place we have been this summer was Ryan, OK because of how friendly the people were, he really enjoyed talking with the farmers there. Some of Dan's favorite memories so far have been early in the summer on a day things were going well and Jon was sitting in the blue truck drinking a pop with his foot out the window, so carefree. He also said he really enjoyed when little Owen got to ride in the truck with him to the elevator by Pond Creek. Dan's favorite foods this summer were Holly's homemade pancakes and scotcheroo bars. I asked the guys if this summer was different than what they had expected. Dan said he thought all the fields we would be doing would have been bigger but also that there would be more jerks to deal with, so it was overall better than he expected, the food was also better than what he thought it would be like.

Dan Melchert is Jon's Dad and a farmer from Morristown, MN. He has been along on all 3 summers of our wheat harvesting driving his combine. His favorite place we have been to is Julesburg, CO because its beautiful country out there, Lucy's Diner was good, and there was a nice welcome center across from the RV park that we frequented. Dan's favorite memory this summer is that he made it to Oklahoma; last year he was stuck at home trying to get the crops planted because of the wet spring and didn't join us until later. His favorite food is a cold meat sandwich with peanut butter on it and Holly's Grandma's famous monster cookies that she brought us.

Kyle Benson is 19 and from West Concord, MN. Driving combine where its 60 degrees and sunny in his cab is usually where you will find Kyle, but recently he has been driving the straight trucks more so he can get practice with that and let Andy drive combine. His favorite place this summer has been both of our stops in Oklahoma; he really enjoyed seeing the big cattle ranches. Oh and also the swimming pool in Faith was another of his favorite spots. Kyle said it has been all good memories for him, but he thought it was cool in Ryan when he was combining and he could see coyote pups popping their heads out of their holes after the header went by. Kyle's favorite foods have been the peach cobbler I make and peach iced tea. Sometimes I mix up 2 pitchers a day of it! This has been about what Kyle had expected, it was longer hours than he thought it would be when we first started out, but now we have more down time than he (and the rest of us) would like. Kyle said, "You'll never see the country as you do through the eyes of a harvester." Well said.

Andy Wagner turned 28 this summer and is Holly's cousin. They grew up by each other farming by Morristown, MN. Andy has done all 3 summers of wheat harvesting with us and is a trusted truck driver and heavy equipment hauler. He likes to drive the combine or cart when he gets a chance to as well. His favorite place this summer was the swimming pool in Faith. And a favorite memory of his is that Dan Melchert has grown a goatee like him. He said that he doesn't have a favorite food, it's all been good! (very good answer)

Levi Traxler is a 21 year old from by Kenyon. He studied diesel mechanics at SCC and works with his Dad. The first 2 pictures I took of him his eyes were half closed, you will have to ask him how I got him to keep his eyes open so good for this picture! He joined us half way through July in South Dakota. He said being on the wheat harvest is what he expected it would be like, driving machinery or fixing it, and thinks it is good. He has been doing well driving the tractor chasing the combines around the field with the grain cart, and also with fixing things indeed. His favorite place so far was the pool in Faith (are we seeing a pattern here???) since this town's pool is under construction. He doesn't like that the cell phone service isn't very good. Levi's favorite memory was when he was riding in one of the straight trucks with Kyle on their way to get more machinery moved and one of the stacks fell off, he said they aren't even sure how it happened. His favorite food has been tater tot hotdish.

Caleb Traxler and Jacob Velzke, they wanted to be in the picture together. Caleb is also 21 and from Kenyon (he and Levi are twins). He went to SCC for carpentry. Caleb came as an expert grain cart driver and quickly turned into a pro combine driver, he did drive the cart some too this summer. His favorite place we have been is Colorado because we got done there quickly, it didn't drag out and there wasn't any downtime. But whenever we did have downtime we have had hundreds of movies to watch thanks to Caleb for bringing big binders of movies along! A good memory of Caleb's was the days they got to go swimming at the Faith pool (see - the pattern continues...) He seems to like all foods, but said his favorite was the meatloaf. The summer hasn't really been any different than he expected, he just wished there was a better TV in their camper.

The twins: Levi and Caleb and their long lost triplet: Jacob. It turns out that Jake shares a birthday with the twins!! I thought that was pretty neat. He is 2 years younger than them though, at 19 years old. Jake is from the Waterville area and a distant cousin of Jon's. Last year Jake was studying to be a truck mechanic in Albert Lea, and this summer (his 1st year on a wheat harvest) he says he is training to be a Case IH mechanic as well. Jake mostly drives grain truck for us but has driven the tractor and grain cart some too. His favorite place was our 1st stop in Ryan, OK. He really liked one of the farmers there and thought everybody was nicer down there. It was just neat to him to spend time in Oklahoma overall he said because it is so different from back home. A good memory of Jake's from the summer was spending time at the swimming pool in Faith......imagine that. Jake was always happy to see me coming with meals but he especially liked the pizza hotdish and peach cobbler.

Jon Melchert is 27 and from the Morristown area, a hard-working and ambitious farm boy. This is his third summer leading our crew from MN to OK and back home again. Jon drives combine and manages the PR when he isn't in the middle of repairs. He just loves farming and driving machinery. This year his favorite places were: Colorado because it was fast work with no downtime and Bird City, KS because it was good wheat and good combining. Some of Jon's favorite foods are grilled burgers, spaghetti, and cucumber salad. His favorite thing is getting to go on dates with Holly when it works out. The most frustrating part of the summer for Jon is the bad cell phone reception at most places we are at. The past 3 summers have been a lot more challenging than what Jon expected it to be. Being in unfamiliar areas trying to order parts or get help with repairs and then the unavailability of a lot of parts in a lot of places. He said this is the hardest thing he has ever done but it has also brought him the greatest sense of accomplishment by far he said. Jon hopes that the guys working for us will take skills learned and experiences had throughout the summer that will benefit them the rest of their lives.

Last Friday after lunch we changed out the sections on all 4 combine heads, it went pretty fast with so many people working on them.

A canola field.

A brown canola seed pod. The seeds are tiny, much smaller than wheat kernels.

Most of the canola up here in ND is swathed so that is dries down quicker. About a week after it is swathed it can be combined. We won't be combining any canola this year, though we had some possibilities. In OK and KS they typically don't have to swath the canola, it dries down so much earlier in the season and its much hotter there. Earlier in the season canola plants have yellow flowers all over, the fields are very pretty in the flowering stage. You can smell a canola field if you are close to it, it reminds me of what the canning factory smells like.

There are some missile sites in and around the fields we have harvested.

A barley field. It looks almost identical to wheat, just that the beards are longer. I don't think we will be combining any barley. It is very slow uploading pictures here. I will try to get more posted in the next couple days.

On to New Territory.....North Dakota

We finished up combining in South Dakota on July 22nd I believe. Then Jon & Holly took the car up to North Dakota to meet with some farmers and see if we could pin down a job. We didn't want to haul all the machinery up that way unless we had a pretty good chance of getting work up there. The car was acting up while we were up there as well, so almost 1 whole day was spent dinking around with that. We also took a day to drive to Estevan, Canada to meet with a farmer there. It was interesting for us as neither of us had been to Canada even! The fields were huge up there, thousands of acres some of them. I don't think it will work out for us to harvest for that farmer though. Getting everything and everybody into Canada to work is proving to be more of a challenge than we thought. It isn't ruled out for sure yet, as I say; I can tell you the "plan" as of this minute, but it can and probably will change by tonight, then again tomorrow and next week as well. So we continue to live on the edge because there isn't much other way in this job. Getting back into the US was a hassle, the interrogation was intimidating. They could not understand why we would go into Canada through 1 port of entrance and come back out through another port of entrance! (there are ports of entry all along the ND / Canada border) We have never been here, this is partly a road trip for us, we have big machinery that we haul around and if we would come work in Canada we have to find a port we can FIT everything through...... And we were in Canada for all of 5 hours, maybe. Meanwhile, back at base camp (in south dakota)......the guys got the machinery loaded on the trailers, then had a few days to do whatever they wanted.....hunt prairie dogs, go to the pool in the neighboring town every afternoon and meet the local girls, watch movies, sleep.....and their laundry - even if they didn't WANT to!! We did get a job north of Minot, enough to make it worth it to move up there anyways. We hope to pick up more in that area then too. On Saturday, July 28th we packed up camp and everybody and everything headed to North Dakota except Holly, Jake, and the Tauras. It was about a 5 and a half hour drive by car, but with the machinery probably more. But I headed home with the car to get fixed (everyplace in the Minot area is 2-3 weeks booked out!) and Jake was riding along as I would be dropping him off in Flandreau to drive a semi back up to Minot for our friend Chad. That is another story for another time. Speaking of stories, our time in Minot was a story in itself. We couldn't book a hotel ahead of time because we didn't know much ahead of time when we would be finishing up in SD to be able to go to ND. So we drive up there, knowing it is a busy area with all the oil, and find out that the state fair is also going on in Minot. The first hotel we stopped at was full. The next one had 1 regular room and 1 suite left, we took the regular room. But they didn't have any rooms open for the rest of the week. We called around and did find another place for the next couple nights we were there, but it was close! They said during the week most of the hotels are full of oil workers and now with the state fair we were lucky to get anything! The rates were sure high as well. Driving around town I counted at least 5 more hotels being built. That place is booming, every restaurant has help wanted signs. Anyway.....I have been home for a week now, the car is fixed and I am heading back out today. It has been a great week to be home, our church's VBS was going on so I was able to help with that. What a great program it was, I really liked the songs and feel like I got as much out of it as the kids, it was uplifting to me. Jon had called me mid week and asked how much spaghetti he would need for all the guys. I was surprised - he has never made spaghetti before! So we talked about it, that night I asked him how it was. Ok, but not that great he said. Mushy noodles.....never good. I give him a lot of credit for trying at least! Otherwise they have grilled burgers, done sloppy joes, hot dogs, and I suppose gas station and restaurant food. I hear they miss me! Well I am off on the 10 or so hour journey to Mohall. What would be a good 1/2 way resting point? WE-Fest! We got 1 day passes for free so Laura & I will go then I will finish the way to Mohall on Sunday. Should be a fun time, especially since the storm went through last night and not tonight.