The Increase

Af few weeks ago I was at my parents' house and I noticed this field that is right across from our house. I always have intentions of taking pictures of wheat fields but I always miss the opprotunity because once they are gold they don't last very long! This one wasn't quite ready yet. Well, It was ready on Friday and now it is nothing but stubble!
This weekend was looking like a boring one. Justin decided to go fishing at Devil’s Lake and I, lacking plans of my own, ended up at the farm on Friday night. Harvest has commenced and my parents are really busy.

On Saturday morning I thought it would be a good idea to go visit my cousin Katie and her husband. I haven’t seen where she has lived since she got married and moved to northern Minnesota. Soon, my plans changed, however. My brother had to work at his bank teller job until Saturday afternoon. The problem was that conditions for combining were perfect and there were two combines and three trucks but only two drivers! (My dad and my grandpa who is almost too old to climb into machinery and plants himself in his combine at the beginning of the day and doesn’t move. My mom was around but had other work to do as well.) I knew the situation must have been desparate when my dad said “You want to drive combine?”

Now, I haven’t drove a combine in almost 10 years and the one I used to drive was older and much smaller than my dad’s new one, which has a 30 foot header and satellite guided automatic steering. As soon as I agreed he immediately started having second thoughts. I’m sure he was imagining me running into the truck with his new 30 foot header or missing the truck while unloading the grain. I insisted that I wanted to, though, so we went out to the field and he supervised me while I became familiar with the combine. For those inexperienced, the actually driving isn’t the hard part, even with huge machinery. It doesn’t seem as big when you are behind the wheel. Also, the autosteer means that the only time you have to do anything but watch is at the end of the field when you have to lift the header, change speed, and turn all at once. I was most nervous about unloading because 10 years ago I never was responsible for that part. I did it! Yeah! There was a lot of unloading, by the way, because this was some dense, good quality wheat. We had to unload after every round. (It also was very dry with high protein content. . .all good!).
After a few rounds in the cab with Timothy, and after a hilarious display of him imitating my brother’s surly, text messaging auto steer posture, and after several exclamations of “Maren! Are you paying attention to what I just said!?” he left me alone, just me and the field, while he took off with our full truck. No disaster ensued! Then my brother showed up and we moved to a new field, where my grandpa was combining, and he supervised my driving and we made fun of the nonsense my grandpa spewed over the radio as he tried to tell us what to do. Soon, I got bored sitting there because autosteer was doing everything so I bailed and left Pete to the combining and went to visit my cousin.

There I am, at the control panel!

Approaching to unload. Or maybe not. . .the auger is on the left, not the right!

Such a majestic sight! That's Pete in the cab.

Back to the visit to MN. . .I was especially excited about this visit because they have kittens at their house! They live in the country and they have an energetic but nice border collie that I haven't seen since he was a puppy (his name is Walker which is short of Walker Texas Ranger) and several barn cats (Rusty, Miss Kitty, Jackie Boy and Quonset Kitty) and cute little baby kittens! We had dinner, made by Katie, and made plans to go to the vintage drive in movie theater in Warren. We packed a cooler and bought some offsale but when we arrived at the theater the lot was empty and the owner told us that the amplifier was broken. No movie tonight! We got gift certificates though. Then we went to the bar and ended up “roadtripping” like high school kids until we ended up at one of Adam’s old friends’ house where a dying party was going on. It was pretty fun, actually. Very silly.

The next day I met Justin in Larimore and we went back to the farm so Justin could satisfy his combining urge. This meant that my brother had to join my dad in the filthy world of truck driving. Haha. You can’t text and drive those beasts! My mom and I walked to the neighbors’ yard because they always let us pick their sweet corn. Holy crap! They didn’t just have corn. They had a huge garden! And of course, all of their plants were about three times the size of the ones in our garden. I might have sneaked an onion out with the corn because it looked so delicious! Next year I am going to smuggle a truckload of RRV pasture soil to Bismarck so I can have a garden with tomato plants that are 5 feet tall and pepper plants that are up to my waist and onions that actually grow