raincation – day 5

This was on the side panel of the New Holland demo combine.

I slept in this morning. Why not? Nothing was pushing me to get out of bed.

Jim headed out to dump Frank. It didn’t get dumped on Sunday afternoon because of the monster storm that was chasing us out of the field. We took it to the farmers yard and left it. Once he got it dumped, he was going to take it to the shed where “the boys” were going to help him put the new air conditioner part in which will, hopefully, fix the problem once and for all. We’ll see.

It was a wee bit slimy when Jim moved Frank to higher ground last night. I was a little concerned that he wasn’t going to get it moved. 

The “lake” is slowly, but surely, drying up. You can’t see it, but there’s a north/south road near those poles just to the left of the house. There was even dirt blowing this afternoon. 

I needed to go to Garden City again yesterday – and so did Jim. I had to take something to the post office and find a zipper to try to fix Jenna’s backpack. It was enough of an excuse for us to venture out of the Cottage again. We hit the two places I needed to go and then Jim informed me we needed to pick up the right air conditioner part at the parts house. So it was back to Kansas Truck Parts. He came out smiling so I’m guessing he finally won the battle!

On our way out of town, we stopped at the New Holland Support trailer. It was good to visit with some familiar faces. Unfortunately, we may have ruined what they had planned for the afternoon. We sort of took up a bit of their time just because we had nothing better to do.

The demo combine that’s following the harvest. Anyone wanting to try out a New Holland combine can find the support trailer and they’ll get ya set up!

The New Holland trailer isn’t the only one in Garden City. We found these sitting within the same area, as well:

These support trailers follow the harvest from south to north. I don’t know how we could do our job without them! I’m so thankful the manufacturers make all effort to get these guys out there for us!

So, after we killed the New Holland guys’ afternoon, we took off and headed to see what it looked like where the Yellow Beast was parked and Jim wanted to move Frank to higher ground. The clouds were beginning to build up again – threatening more rain.

The real reason Jim wanted to get to the combine was to open a door in the unloading auger to let the water drain and pull out as much rain-soaked wheat as possible. While he was digging, he kept making these grunting noises. “What’s going on”, I asked. “Everything’s frozen tight”, was his reply. I’m guessing the wheat had soaked up enough water and trying to move the auger by hand just wasn’t going to happen. This is why you don’t want to leave a full bin of wheat on a combine during rain. The grain will soak up the water and make a real mess…real fast!

While driving the countryside, I had Jim stop so I could take a couple pictures of what the hail in our area did to the corn.

Puddles everywhere! As a matter of fact, while we were driving around yesterday afternoon, we witnessed several puddles that were substituting as swimming pools for kids. After the dry conditions, these little kids may never have played in water puddles like this before!

There’s a 40% chance of more rain tonight. Will we miss it again tonight and MAYBE try cutting late tomorrow? Or will it rain again and extend our raincation? Stay tuned…