Harvest Update

This past week we had a good week harvesting.  The weather this fall has been nearly ideal.  We combined soybeans most of the week and it went well except several mornings were foggy and damp and we couldn't start until afternoon.  We finished with soybeans late last night, so we will try to finish corn this week.  In one of the fields that we were harvesting corn in this week, I found cattails growing in a wet area.  You know we had a wet year when you have cattails in your field!

The previous week was a bit more challenging.  Wednesday night we finished a field knowing we had some internal problems with the combine.  Thursday morning I crawled in the back of the combine and took a picture of the missing section of chaffer on the upper left hand side.  I took the picture to the service department at our dealer and he ordered all the parts he thought we would need.  No local dealer had the parts in stock, but since we are 2 hours away from the John Deere parts distribution warehouse in Milan, I volunteered to leave immediately to pick them up.  I called the service department as I left Milan for home and they sent a mechanic to the farm to start dis-assembly of the damaged parts.  Before I got home, they called and said the damage was much more serious than previously thought.  The chaffer and sieves had broken away from the sidewalls and they also needed replacing (along with other items).  They called the order to Milan and my brother took off in his pickup on our second trip to the Quad Cities. While the second trip was in progress, I drove the combine to the dealership because they wanted it in the shop to do the work.  What they failed to inform us, was that the parts ordered would not fit in the back of a pickup!  My brother called me from the warehouse and told me he would need a trailer to bring them home.  My nephew was drafted to make the third trip.  I helped him hook up the trailer and off he went.  It was a late night for them!  Friday morning my brother delivered the parts to the dealership and they put two mechanics on the job.  The Service Manager called late Saturday morning to let me know that they just finished the repairs, so I had the machine back home by 1:00.  We missed two and a half days in the field that week.

That Friday morning I discovered that the grain dryer went down over night.  The motor starter contactors wouldn't release, so the wet corn auger wouldn't shut off when the dryer was full.  That meant that we burned up a set of belts.  Our electrician had to order a new starter which didn't come until Monday.  Since we weren't in the field anyway it didn't matter much, so the farm was a little quieter over the weekend.

That Sunday, we were invited to Goodfield for their Invite-a-Guest weekend.  We had a blessed day in church and enjoyed catching up with Lee and Alice and four-wheeling around their estate.  It had been a while since we were in Goodfield church and it was good to catch up with a lot of friends and relatives.

Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.
Jeremiah 5:24