Monday, September 23, 2013

Kansas, Pratt - Monday, September 23, 2013 - Working in the Dust


Greg headed out to the field to disk again this morning.  The forecast was for “breezy weather”, winds of 20 mph with gusts up to 30.  As it turned out the wind was sustained at about 40 mph with gusts up to 60 as the day wore on.  He had to call it quits about 6:00 p.m. because he couldn’t see where he was going.  As he was disking he was making dust and the winds were bringing in more.  I was going to pick him up and his instructions were “just look for the tower”.  I knew which tower he was talking about, but soon discovered I couldn’t see it because of all the dust!  Luckily I found him anyway.

This was my assignment for the day – David’s swather.  A few days ago I got a crash course in operating this thing.  Today I did much better because most of the time the swather was guiding itself through the GPS unit.  All I had to remember was to slow down at the end of the row, bring the header up so I didn’t mess up the hay that had already been cut, turn it around, put the header back down (making sure not to miss any standing hay), hit the GPS button and pick up the speed.  After about 3 times around, I was feeling pretty good and enjoyed the rest of the day.  Hope David thinks I did ok once he looks over the field.
 
 

This is what the cut hay looks like.  The swather covers 16’ at a time and all of these rows of cut hay look really nice.  It must smell good too because I was cutting next to a feedlot and all of the cows were looking over the fence like they wouldn’t mind a sample.
 

This is a picture of the sun at around 5:00 this evening.  A storm isn’t coming in, it is just so much dust in the air.  Several major highways were closed in western Kansas, it was just like driving through heavy fog.
 

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