This past week seemed to follow a pattern, hot in the day and then thunder boomers, rain and lightning at night. Crops that had a tendency to lie down got more tired. Some barley crops, it's hard to find a section standing up. I hope the boys got all the rocks picked before seeding, because they are going to be right down there where all the rocks are laying when cutting the crop. This may enrich all the guys selling guards and sections. It also increases the chances of injecting a stone into your combine. Those with rotaries and no stone trap, be careful. Repairs are very expensive.
I have possible hoar frost rains marked for mid-month and one for the last week in the month. I also have possibility of frost in the last week of August. I hope I am wrong but we will see. The Big Guy will decide.
On the home front, we have had a good week. The tin is on the roof of the elevator office in town. It has been downpour tested and never leaked a drop. What a pleasant change. Before the water would come down the side of the elevator, across the drive shed roof and down onto the office roof. With the roof leaking what a mess in the office. We have a sump pump in the basement and when that happened, the pump was busy.
We also took all the tiles off the ceiling and the guys tinned the office ceiling. What a difference. No more soggy tiles half hanging from the roof. Weekend warrior Cole is now an experienced roof tinner with coaching from Sven. On this farm I believe you learn to do by doing. Cole is doing.
The oil and filters are changed. Grease is applied and gear oil is checked on the wobble boxes. The swathers are declared ready to go. They have been run with no hot bearing on the rollers. We can hope for the best but Murphy's Law says we're not likely to get through harvest without some additional fixing. That is just the way it is. We are two or three weeks away from swathing wheat.
Next week we tackle the combine. It is sitting in front of the shop waiting for Monday. We also have to find a home for my super-B of bin butt wheat. We hauled it up to the orange elevator at Marshall, but they said it had five per cent heated and sent it home. They had no problem taking my other wheat. This is the same wheat! I like to haul there because it is close but I am not impressed with grain buying like that. I will be looking for a different elevator.
As we start on the combine I can't help but reminisce about how it was when I was young. The old threshing machines at son Ron's place stirred my memory. My grandfather always had something pulled up to the shop that needed fixing. July 1, we would start on the high-wheeled racks that gathered the sheaves from the field. To start with, harvest involved a lot of horses. When they were cutting the crop they had three teams of horses on binders. That was before I came along. When I was 12 my dad bought a PTO binder and father appointed me tractor driver on his LA Case, hand clutch. On the first day he did a lot of yelling but after that either my driving improved or he was too hoarse to yell. Before my time they had a half a dozen teams and wagons to haul sheaves to the threshing machine. To save labour they bought a stook loader. There were four horses on that. My grandfather and John Kolinoski, the town blacksmith, took the horse hitch off and made it so it could be pulled by grandfather's Hart Parr steel-wheeled tractor. That saved four horses.
By this time my grandfather was getting older and wanted to go home early so, when I got home from school, I was to go out and drive his Hart Parr tractor and load sheaves on the racks.
That is why I now claim to be the only experienced stook loader operator in the country. That is except for my father-in-law Bob Polinsky. There are only two of us left.
We had special racks made with one side next to the stook loader low, about four feet high, and the other side about eight feet high. To load the rack you drove alongside the stook loader, perched high on the side away from the loader. Later my father purchased a little Oliver 70 tractor and made hitches for the big stook loader racks. That saved six more horses and three men. Then it became my job to get the racks loaded under the stook loader and haul the load of sheaves to the threshing machine, unhook and take the other rack out and load it up. That also was the end of me going to school until harvest was done.
In a few short years we went from six teams and drivers plus field pitchers to load the rack, to a stook loader and only three teams and drivers. Changing the stook loader to tractor pull, four horses less, to converting the hauling rack to tractor pull, six horses and drivers less. Then no more horses. All to harvest 500 acres or less. I was there to see it all. Then we bought a combine in 1960. I was the combiner, Dad was the trucker. That was it, that was the crew!
Joke of the week: Sundays are supposed to be for rest. "Well," says my wife Beverly, "a woman's work is never done. Sundays lately are for the 'rest' of the housework, the 'rest' of the laundry, the 'rest' of the vegetable garden, the 'rest' of the lawn mowing and anything else that didn't get done on Saturday!" OK, I won't mess with that one!
