A little bit of rain

We received a tenth of an inch of rain today.  Even that small amount was so welcome and refreshing.  Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend?  One can always hope....

After so many months of little to no precipitation, it felt good to sit in the bee garden for a spell and let the tiny raindrops fall and dampen my clothing, albeit only slightly!

The view from my little wooden chair made me smile.  

  

Mechanical weeding

I am determined to eradicate the prostrate knot weed from the pasture.  I have decided that the best way to eliminate this pesky weed is by mechanical, rather than chemical means.  So, I have been spending quite a bit of time cutting the weeds out and hauling them away to the burn pile.  

This morning, Reynald offered to help and I gladly took him up on the offer.  We spent about two hours cutting and loading and hauling the knot weed away.  We made really great progress and now I'm fairly certain that I will be able to finish up this project this week.  

Prostrate knot weed.  The tendrils can stretch for several feet.

R is still fairly chipper at this point in the process.  And Baxter is keeping watch in case some one, or something, tries to sneak up on us!

I found that cutting the plant, just below the surface of the soil, with pruning shears, is an effective way to make sure that these buggers don't come back.  They are pretty hard to pull once they get this big.

Two full wheel barrow loads hauled off today.

And Baxter continues to keep an eye out for possible predators!  

 

As High as an Elephant's Eye

 From knee high on the fourth of July.......

To High as an Elephant's Eye one month later!  K, I'm not an elephant but the corn has definitely stretched out during this past month.

Winter quilts

 Thinking about winter quilts may be a way to distract from the record heat that has gripped our area for the last few months!

Some may remember that I set a goal of making a seasonal quilt for every bedroom in our house.  I was closing in on that goal, until I decided that three of the Christmas quilts were just too "Christmas" to take us through the remainder of winter.  A sale at the fabric store in Odessa pushed me over the edge of making two winter quilts!  I already had a option that I have been using for the third.

This winter I set to work and completed these two.  Here's hoping for an abundance of snowflakes outside this coming winter, as well as inside!!

Bear's Paw block.  This turned out to be a bit more labor intensive than I originally thought it would be.  The piecing had to be precise, in order for it to be a striking quilt.  More than one seam was taken out and re-sewn!

Quilting by Nikki at Heartbeat quilting.  

Pineapple Log Cabin block.  I'm very pleased with how this turned out.  This is the second Pineapple Log Cabin quilt that I have made and it is one of my favorite blocks.

Quilting again by Nikki at Heartbeat.  

The Crew!

 Joining us this harvest to help get the crop in are the following amazing folks.

Tyler, guiding Starbucks down the road.

Sean, driving Double Shot.

Erich driving Red Wing, twin to Double Shot only with red fenders!

Eldest crew member, Reynald

Newest crew member and fiance to Alicia.....Matthew!!

And of course, Field Manager and grain cart driver extraordinaire, Alicia.

Due to the light crop this year, the team is zipping through the fields at record pace.  It's still hot and dry causing us to be even more vigilant about fire danger, which can happen in a split second in these conditions.  

Harvest 2021

Going backwards in time......here are a few photos of the beginning of our harvest this year.  I haven't taken time to for additional photos but it's on my list of things to do.

Moving the combines to Matthews place near Odessa.

I towed one of the headers with the pick up.

One machine parked in Matthews yard.

And two machines parked and ready to go.

How close can you park?

Trucks are also in place and waiting.

But not quite so fast.  We bought new headers and they came nicely covered in John Deere green paint.  Which is turns out, is somewhat "sticky" at first.  The standing wheat would not feed in to the throat of the machine, causing it to flip up over the top of the header.

So, we had to spend several hours grinding off the paint between the cutter bar and the auger.  The good news, is that it worked. The bad news is that it was a hot, dirty, icky job. but we got it done.

We were all covered in a fine film of green paint.  Kermit the Frog came to mind.  "It's not easy being green"!

Our yields are way down this year due to the sever drought that has gripped our region.  And as if that were not enough, we had a late from in June that dropped the production in the draws to near zero bushels per acre.  This crop had so much potential, and I have to say, that the wheat plants did their best to give us a few kernels at least.  So many farmers and ranchers are deeply impacted by this lack of moisture.  Fingers crossed and crossed again, that one of these days it will start raining and give some welcome relief to all.   

Back to Work

 Several readers have asked where I have been hiding!  I don't have a good answer so I will say that I intend to start posting farm, family, yard and project photos again!  

Yesterday my one and only farm job was to weed 300 acres that is heavily infested with Rush Skeleton Weed and several Russian Thistle.  This is ground that we broke up following several years of CRP plantings.  It's lovely ground, but will take some time to rehabilitate and build up.  We are up for the challenge!

I was merrily farming when suddenly I heard a very loud "clunk" and I looked back and one weeder was dragging the wheels.  Naturally I stopped to investigate and this is what I found....

This giant rock was buried just below the soil surface.  

I hit it dead on with the center weeder drive boot.  The angle iron that holds the boot to the frame is bent and will require a great deal of repair.  Reynald removed this weeder from the line up and replaced it with one from a different set so that I could finish my job.