J finished cutting yesterday afternoon and parked the combine so our harvest is officially over!! It was a successful harvest, and we can't complain. Great weather (we actually wished for a rain delay a few times), good yields (cut A LOT of 40 bushel wheat and some up to 60), no major breakdowns or problems, and we all survived without killing each other. Actually, everyone remained in pretty good humor throughout even though we were all exhausted.
We had a lot of help, too, which made it a bit easier. We always say we're equal opportunity and this year had helpers from ages 15 to 84! We had R for a couple of weeks which was SO nice. One of J's friends helped one day--he said he was tired of cleaning corrals while waiting for his flax to be ready to cut. Another friend helped for a few days, and we had Uncle Bud who was just going to come out for a day or two when we had a long way to haul and ended up helping for a few weeks. He has helped us a lot through the years but had a tough year last year with heart surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery for colon cancer. He's doing great now. He came out a little later in the morning, and we let him go home before dark generally. He can fall asleep in seconds so gets a lot of little naps in, too. It was nice to have him back.
Some days I get a bit miffed that we don't get much help from the other Thievin wives who are busy with their jobs, but one day it occurred to me that I'm kind of sad for them because they don't get to see the interaction and camaraderie between the guys. There is generally a lot of good-natured ribbing (and occasionally some not so good-natured-haha). They are just not going to understand how things really work around here if they're not here to see it. They are going to get a skewed view if they just listen to their husbands' side of a story.
For example, there is a road sign on a bridge near Richland that the guys can't get around with their headers on. For a few years someone would go pull it out of the ground until they got by and then put it back. At some point J had this bright idea to cut the post and put a hinge in it. That way they could just fold it down when they needed to go by and then flip it back up. One day we were moving and C had flipped the sign down. J went through and as M was getting ready to go through C sees a car coming, point to it and flips the sign back up. M is going 10 mph and can't stop so hits it with his header and messes up the hinge. When L and I got there C was in a panic trying to fix it and says "I don't think he thinks sometimes." So I'm thinking M wasn't paying attention and hit it. Then when I see M, he says "I don't know what he was thinking" because he couldn't stop in time and didn't know why he would flip the sign back up when he did. Some of us had a good laugh over that one. (C wasn't laughing.) I'm just wondering what version of the story C's wife heard that night.
The other day M came home and said he did a bad thing. Of course, that made me nervous. He had called the John Deere dealer about a loader tractor. They have one in the area so they brought it to him last night to try out, and that's where he is right now. Remember how I said before that most things they try out never go back......yeah, I'm worried.
It's finally a beautiful day after five straight days of gale force winds so I think we'll take in the football game and the local high school. Jared is a freshman and plays so we'll go see if he gets any playing time....although it would also be a good day for yard work.
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