Life on the farm

It’s Fall.  

And when you are on the farm in the Fall that means that you’ve been spending many hours both in the daylight and night time in the corn and bean fields bringing in the crops and have them stored safe in the grain bins. Now once they are in the bins you will have to turn on the fan and dry down the corn moisture to keep it from spoiling during the winter.  

I normally am a summer person and like the weather to be in the 90’s – but when Daryl turns on the fan for the bin in October – well I have to say that I Love it! It makes just the best noise for when you’re sleeping. It isn’t loud at all and it’s a noise that you can just barely hear when you’re laying in bed,  but it really let’s you have a good deep sleep when your head hits the pillow at night. Maybe a little part of why you fall asleep so well is because you’re so exhausted .. but I still like to hear the fan going. And what happens sometime is that the fan will shut off (it’s never supposed to just shut off) during the night and that’s never good. Trust me. 

So when the wind turns chilly and the leaves have fallen off the trees and are rustling on the ground – it’s the most perfect time to put the extra blanket on the bed and listen to the hum of the fan drying the corn in the bins during the night. 

The weekend was perfect to be in the field and Daryl took full advantage of it. He started out working on taking out the corn, but then he needed to switch the combine heads and do beans because they were dry. 

And when he changes combine heads  – well that’s where I come in. I NEVER volunteer for the job because these last couple of times that I’ve helped I’ve been in the cab pressing levers and stuff. So when Daryl asked if I’d help, I said sure (but secretly was hoping that I didn’t have to go in the combine cab)

Guess what? I had to go in the combine cab.

But it wasn’t too bad this time and what he has to do is to line up the head (in this case the bean head) and then make sure all the gears will match up. He’s pretty good at it and it really didn’t take too long and soon I was back home again working on my weekend to do list. 

First things first – laundry. 

My Mom always says that she thinks that we do a lot of laundry – and I guess she’s right. But with the sun shining and it’s the weekend, I really wanted to get the clothes line full. It’s such a great feeling when there is actually nothing in the house that needed to be washed at the end of the weekend, but now I wish it was all stored away in the right spots. I even took everything out of the drawers where we store our chore clothes and washed all of that. Now I don’t know why I washed it to possibly throw it away, but it’s all clean and ready to be sorted. The key word here is ‘ready’ to be sorted 🙂

So getting back to the soybeans, when I took dinner out to Daryl I was going to ride around for a couple of rounds until I almost got half way up the combine ladder when Daryl said that it’s pretty dusty and I’ll need to take a shower when I get home. OK, change of plans. I snapped a couple of pictures and was on my way. 

At the end of the weekend Daryl was happy to say that all our beans are done.

Well for me, other than doing a lot of laundry this weekend, I also was able to get the garage painted. I haven’t had a chance to take an ‘after’ picture yet, so I’ll see if I can get that done to show you how good it looks now. And I also mowed all our lawn for hopefully the last time this year. They are talking about a hard frost in a couple of days, so I sure hope that it will stop the mowing season once and for all! 

The field work continues and we are very happy that the weather is also cooperating. With the good weather, I had a chance to hang out with Daryl this week and ride around with him in the combine. And guess what? I can see why he likes it. I mean there is no one to bug you and the phone isn’t ringing with surveys on who you would like to have for the next president or anything. It’s just hanging out in the field with the bright moon overhead and life if pretty peaceful. 

Well that is until your wife wants to ride around with you for awhile. 

It’s seriously the best opportunity to bring him up to speed on what’s going on and what we should be doing for the next couple of weeks or months. You know – really important stuff. 

So I try not to ride too long with Daryl in the combine, only once in awhile. We don’t have one of the newer fancy combines that literally has a ‘buddy seat’. Our combine you have to squeeze behind the seat and kind of jimmy your butt so you can fit. And when you have to turn on the auger to unload the corn? Yea, that can be a challenge. You are literally sitting on top of that lever. Oh well, it’s not that bad and really kind of fun hanging out with Daryl even if it’s only for a couple of rounds. And then I’m off heading back home to get some stuff done around the farm and house. 

Here’s a couple of pictures that I snapped the last time that I was Daryl in the field. 

Making the rounds – looking down the corn rows from the combine cab

Unloading corn from the combine to the wagons in the fields

I have a question. 

How come when you eat either dinner or supper in the field it tastes so much better? I mean it’s really the same food now isn’t it that you would eat at your kitchen table? 

Well I was thinking about this tonight when I was making Daryl some supper while he was out combining corn.

So to get to the point of actually bringing the food to the field usually starts the same way every time. The first thing that I do is open the refrigerator and stare in and hope by some magic that there will be the perfect answer to what I should make or warm up. Now 9 times out of 10 that is never the case! 

OK, what should I make? So what I do (and I bet a lot of others also do this!) is to just start grabbing things out of the refrigerator and hope that as you are bringing them out that something will work. 

I always think when I’m making supper for the guys in the field about that one show when they give you like 20 minutes to make a meal.  I seriously think a farm wife created that show if you ask me! And it was in the fall when they were in the fields too! 

Like I said, you just start seeing what you have in the refrigerator and what you can warm up for the night. But guess what? When you have everything warmed up and maybe some potatoes fried, and then everything is packed in some kind of pan, it doesn’t look too bad! With my pans out to the field I always try to have a candy bar or two doesn’t hurt either. 

So with your cake pan covered and the sandwiches under the towels wrapped in tin foil, off you go to the field. And it’s like this anticipation when you pull the kitchen towel back to see just what’s on the menu for the night. And as your’e sitting in the truck cab or standing out in the field, you know that for some reason the exact same thing could be served while sitting in your kitchen and it just doesn’t taste the same. 

I’m not sure why it tastes so much better out in the field – but it just does. 

I got out the paint scrapper this week and to be honest it felt pretty good. Now either this is a good thing or a bad thing – I’m just not quite sure! 

But what I do know is what I had on ‘2016 September To Do List’ was to paint the garage and some other white trim around the farm. Now did this get done in September? No it didn’t! But to my defense there was one heck of a lot of rain that we got that we normally don’t see in the fall so it made it pretty hard to paint anything this summer. 

Well now that we’re hopefully done with most of the rain, I dug out the paint scrapper and started in on the garage. It’s one of those things that you are really excited to start and then when you can see a pretty good dent in the project you think to yourself – maybe I shouldn’t have started this. You just dread that it’s going to be more work and time that you’ve got and well .. it’s really too late now! 

And there are hurdles along the way.

The first one that I had to overcome was some darn wasps! Now don’t you think that there are a lot of wasps this year? If for some crazy reason you don’t have them in your yard, please let me know. I can send you over about 10 or 500 of them! When I was scraping the walls I kept having to swat the wasps away until I just about had it. I’m sure I had some wasp spray in the house and that was going to take care of them. Well of course I couldn’t find any, but I did find some mold spray for walls. And when I was reading the label it said to keep out of reach of children, I knew it must not be too good and that I had a winner for my wasps! So out of the house I go with my mold spray feeling pretty smug and ready to kill anything that’s flying around me. And guess what? It actually worked! I found my first target and sprayed the mold spray on the wasp and at first it kind of wavered but when I gave him another shot – BAM! down he went. So I sprayed quite a bit of the spray on the next and finally when I didn’t see anything flying around anymore, and the one that was flying around the garage like a B2Bomber wasn’t in sight – down the nest came. 

My concern with this nest is that can you see how many empty holes there are? No WONDER there was so many wasps by the garage!

The only other challenge that I had tonight was that I was literally scraping the back and side of the garage by the light of our yard light and moon. It was pretty dark outside and with rain forecasted for tomorrow,  I just wanted it done. Now I’m not sure how good of a job I did, but for now I’m sure it’s fine. 

Now on to the next step – getting it painted!