Busy Girl!

Isn't vacation supposed to be a time where you relax, regroup, catch up on sleep, etc? Well, mine was about the exact OPPOSITE of that! I had 10 days off of work (in a row!!!), which I haven't done for about a year and a half. Even though I get 3 weeks of paid vacation a year. Lame, I know.

I was going to blog last week when I got back from Texas, but well, that just didn't happen. I didn't even read anyone else's blogs because it just takes too freaking long with my slow internet. But rest assured friends, I have LOTS to be sharing with you this week!

I'll recap my Texas trip tomorrow, and today, I'll tell you a little bit about what's been going on around the farm!

IT'S HARVEST TIME!

That means, all of the hard work my farmer and his family put in all year long is finally coming to fruition. That is, after then work 14 hour days, sitting on a combine, cutting all of the wheat out in the fields. Here is my farmer on the family's combine.

Fortunately the weather was cooperative this year and we had LOTS of help on the farm for harvest time, so they got all 3,600 (ish) acres cut in about 2 weeks. We had 3 of these combines going, but this is the "big one." It has a 36 foot head on it (the piece on the left), which means it cuts more at a time. These machines pretty much run from sun up until after sun down in the evenings. There are lots of other things that come into consideration, that mostly include moisture levels and how tough the wheat is, but I won't get into that!

This is the view that Patrick sees for about 10 hours a day:

And yes, that is a sandwich in his hand. These guys don't even stop for lunch. My job during harvest is to make lunch, deliver lunch, and help cook dinner when I can. I also help flag the combines, meaning you have to drive in a vehicle with your flashers on in front of the combines to let oncoming traffic know that they need to get the heck outta the way!

You can see all of the monitors above his head that tell you how high the header is off the ground, at was degree it is sitting off of the ground, how fast you're going (he averaged about 6 mph), what your yield is, and all sorts of other information. The orange thing in his right hand is to control the header, and it's much like a nintendo game controller!

I have more pictures to share, but those will have to wait for another day after I edit them to make them look all pretty for you guys :)

Happy Monday friends!