Lefebure.com / Farming / 2005 Alex / Atwood, KS

2005-6-27
"A Day From Hell..."
Lance here - So the deal with the header trailer is that they broke a cylinder when letting down the headers down. The nearly dropped the headers on the ground, but now the trailer is in a bind and they cannot get the headers off the trailer. They are waiting on a front-end loader to help out. There is now 1 combine holding the end of one of the headers up. So out of the 5 machines they have in the area, only 2 are cutting. However, the wheat in this area is running better that expected. Everyone thought it would do 40 bu/ac, but it is more like 60 bu/ac on what has been cut so far.

Alex has been running a different grain cart today - the 8520 with a 1080 Brent cart. This tractor has duals up front with some extra front weights. It steers a lot better than the other one he had been driving. This caused a problem though when he caught the nose of one of the semis. There is a broken headlight and turn signal, plus a little bit of the hood. Kind of a bad start to the harvest in this area. They are cutting a ways from Atwood, about 6 miles from the NE border. It is a short 6 mile haul to the elevator, but there is a steep hill between the fields and the elevator. The 2600 acre farm that they are cutting on is for sale, and Alex tells me it is about the perfect farm to buy if one wanted to own some wheat ground.

Update #2 from Terri Ryan:
They did manage to get back into the fields today, and the hydraulics went out on the trailer that was carrying the draper headers. They thought that they could still get them unloaded, but as it turned out, they about dropped them onto the ground. They are now waiting on a front end loader to arrive so that they can get them off of the trailer. And, if that wasn't bad enough...the grain cart driver ran into the front of the semi this morning. It is a smaller grain cart being pulled by a smaller tractor, and they were unaware that it turns a lot sharper than the one they had been operating. They straightened the front of the semi back out, and everything is good there now.

Update #1 from Terri Ryan:
They finished cutting around Ellinwood/Great Bend Saturday evening and got everything loaded up. The pulled out about 9:30 Sunday morning en-route to Atwood, Kansas, where they will be cutting at McDonald, Kansas. They got there, and got everything unloaded, and they were trying to repair an air-hose, and Taff (the supervisor of one of the crews) slipped with a razor blade, so Alex took him to the emergency room. He ended up cutting part of his thumb off. When they got done there, they went into Colby and had supper.

Lance here - Terri has sent me a bunch of pictures today from the film that was recently developed. Be sure to check the previous locations for new pictures.