Almost

Tomorrow will be December 1st. I cannot believe it is time to start thinking about Christmas. I am sure I just finished putting all that stuff away yesterday. I will admit that one year it didn't get put away. It was much easier to decorate that year.

Our grandson will be 14 months old tomorrow. Seems like only yesterday that he stole my heart and there was "another man" in my life. He is such a fascinating little guy to watch. He is so busy and can figure out something to do with whatever he comes across.

Our daughter was married in April, we went to their home for Thanksgiving last week and she set a beautiful table with the china they received as wedding gifts and served a great meal. I remember when she would dump everything out of the bottom drawer in the kitchen and crawl in it and play.

I thought it might be about time to book my flight for the class I will be taking in TX this coming Feb. Doesn't seem possible that it will be a year in a little over 2 months that I was down there for the last class I took with Hollis on color.

And I was going to work on color this summer, but summer is over and fall is quickly following and guess what, I have done little work on learning more about color. I did take Sharon Boggen's journal class though. One of the best classes I have taken on line, ever! So I did accomplish something.

So here is to the last day in November. I had to post something.

Hmmmmm, 3 weeks

It has been 3 weeks since I last blogged and I was really going to make an effort to get one a day this month, so much for that. In about 6 weeks, it will be a year that I started the Photo a Day challenge. Hmmm, that didn't work out so well either. This is the reason I don't belong to Facebook or Twitter, I have too much technology in my life now that I don't manage well. I don't need anymore despite the urging of some friends.

It is only 2 days before Thanksgiving and we are still picking corn!!!! It is not going to be done before then either as it will not dry down.

I did ride in the combine several weeks ago with my husband and took some photos of the inside of the cab. The technology that is inside the cab is amazing to me. When I grew up, combines didn't even have cabs. If they were lucky, they had an umbrella over their heads during wheat harvest and there certainly wasn't a heater in the fall and winter.

The orange joy stick is what he uses to run any number of things, i.e. as the unloading auger. He will pre-set some operations so that he just pushes a button and it will automatically go back to the pre-set postion.

There are monitors around that constantly put out all kinds of information pretaining to how the combine is operating and grain being harvested. One screen is telling him the number of bushels being harvested, the moisture of the corn, what it is making per acre, and lots more info that has been saved from other operations during the year.

This is one of the monitors and it is showing the number of bushels being harvested and charting it in colors. He sets it to record at certain levels. Each color represents a number of bushels. Such as 190-200, 200 to 210, etc. The trick to making this work is fine tuning, in a word, accurate calibration. Everything is recoreded on to a flash card and he will be able to bring it in after harvest and print off whatever information he wants.

We have used two grain carts this year as this combine picks corn much faster than our older one did and it is not good to have the combine sitting in the field waiting on a grain cart. It has also been very muddy and part of the time they have not been able to load the carts to capacity.

Fall colors

The time in the harvest field was short lived. They finished one field, moved to the next field today and the moisture is too high in the corn. It is to be in the 70's tomorrow so hopefully we will get some drying.

Walking around our farm this evening I came upon the locust pods that had fallen off one of the trees. I love the deep reddish brown. A color to strive for the next time I dye fabric.

Back in the Field Again

The photo is some distance away, but I was unable to get any closer than the
edge of the field. If I were to go out there I would get stuck and be on my own as far as figuring out how to get out of my predicament. No one would have any sympathy for me if I did something that illogical and rightly so.

It is wonderful to see the combine and grain carts back in the field again. The sky is dark to the north and the temperature has dropped about 10 degrees in the last 10 minutes. Hopefully the moisture will stay away so everyone can harvest corn and sunflowers.

WAITING!!!

The photos in this post were taken on Friday, after the snow and wind subsided. This is the end result of the blizzard we experienced Thursday afternoon, through the early morning hours of Friday.

The first photo is the north side of one of our fields of dry land corn. The snow drift is up to the top of the tassels, the corn is over 6 feet in height. This drift covers at least one pass of the corn head in width, which is 12 rows of corn, and the length of the drift is 1/2 mile.

The next two photos are taken at at another field, part of it is irrigated and the snow drifted into the corner on the irrigated section because the dry land to the right caught most of the snow and kept it out of the irrigated field. The drift is again over 6 feet in height, across the road where we would normally travel with the trucks. The grain carts will have to come out of the fields with

half a load and meet the semis on the road when

loading them.

The sign marks an underground pipeline. It is in the ditch, the ditch filled with snow and continued on out into the corn field. One would be hard pressed to find a corn field in eastern CO that didn't have a drift in it somewhere on the northeast, north and/or northwest side.

It has been warm the last two days, 67 yesterday and today it is in the 60's with a good strong breeze. Hopefully we will be able to pick corn tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday in those areas not covered by snow drifts. Not sure when we will be able to pick the corn buried in the snow drifts, only time will tell. I'm still counting on the forecast of the woolly bear caterpillar.