
Like her dad, Lucy likes to eat the kernels of grain right out of the field, be it wheat, soybeans or barley, she enjoys a good chew on the hard little seeds. She took it a step further the other day however, when I caught her eating flour by the handfuls. Of all the things in that cupboard that she could reach, she went for the flour...My girl likes her carbs raw.

Soybean harvest is a fickle thing. Less tricky than potatoes, since the soybeans can really stay in the field until...well...a long time. Certainly a lot longer than potatoes can. But the wet fall has made for some anxious days, wondering if there will be enough fine weather to 'get them off' as we say. Alas, it looks like this year there will be. Mark was out yesterday, finishing up what we hoped to be the last of the beans for this year. Things were going really quite well, (except for the yields in one field, which were less than satisfactory) until Halloween night when Mark heard a knocking in the combine (generally not a great sound with any kind of machine), and suddenly (although evidently, it had been a while in coming) the main intake auger on the flex header of the combine literally snapped in two. Not good.
So Mark was using the other header yesterday, which is really designed for grains. The difference is, that soybeans grow so close to the soil, that the flex header is built to 'flex' with the hills and valleys of the rows so that more of the beans can be picked up. The regular grain header is built with a solid front section to zip through the grains which are hopefully standing up and waving in the wind at harvest. It just means slower going and possibly missing a few beans here and there. The risk of waiting until the other header is fixed and testing the weather isn't worth those few beans that may be missed.
It all sounded good in theory and was going fairly well, until after four rounds and a full tank, Mark went to unload into the gravity wagon and the unloading auger (technical term hahaha) wouldn't engage. SO, once again, things are at a stand still until that is fixed (the project for this wet day). Also, yesterday we found another flex header for parts, so project number two is putting the 'new' intake auger into the 'old' header.
Mark unloading into one of the gravity wagons (when the unloading auger worked!)




I was doing my annual 'kids in leaves' autumn photo shoot that was going pretty well until a chicken rudely interrupted! She was pretty curious and pretty photogenic too. My family at home probably thinks I'm crazy posting pictures of a chicken, but I feel confident that I've got readers out there who appreciate an up close profile of a regular ol' laying hen. Haha!




Hope all is well in your corner of the world!
-Sally
-Sally
love the pictures sally,and even the chicken good luck with the repairs
ReplyDeleteellie says hi to everybody and that she really liked the picture of the big spider
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