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Trying to Beat the Rain

It's been fairly quiet on this blog because we've been busy. I'm still trying to adapt to working part-time, homeschooling, and doing all the normal things that people expect of me: making sure food is prepared on a daily basis and the house stays livably clean and there are at least a few clean clothes to choose from. (Yes, I share the load, but training teenagers is a work in progress.) I have realized lately that I am usually too exhausted to do any fun-for-me things, and/or simply haven't the time. I'm working on that, as I realize that I'm shriveling up like fingers and toes that have been in the bathtub too long.

Other things that get left out when I am too busy are working with The Farmer and taking photos for the blog. These photos were taking by my mother in law and my daughter.


Our field of lovely sunflowers has been ready to harvest for over three weeks. Except for one thing. Excessive rain has made the clay field difficult to walk through, much less drive a who-knows-how-many-ton combine through. Each day we watched the seeds fall to the ground and the birds gorge themselves, and The Farmer was quietly thinking. Maybe we should pick them by hand...


So over the past 2-3 weeks, every spare moment all free family members have been cutting the heads and placing them in sacks slung over their shoulders. When the sack is full, it gets emptied into the pickup truck.


When the truck is full, it is driven home, to where the combine is parked safely on solid ground. The heads are shoveled into the working combine, which separates the seeds from the rest, storing the seeds up in the hopper of the combine and spitting the junk out the back.


The Farmer positions the combine so that the junk is deposited in one of the sheep pastures. The sheep and cattle and llama love sorting through the chaff and finding the treats. Waste not, want not.


I give The Farmer (and all his helpers) credit. He's got more tenacity than I do. And because of that, the field was about 80% harvested before the last drenching rains came.

I think the rest will be left for the wildlife to glean.

Comments

  1. Yeah, a combine stuck in the muck is not a pretty sight. Somebody got most of their soybeans in south of here, except for some big oval low spots in the field where they decided it was too wet.

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