I am losing my faith in humanity. I had an experience this week that left me depressed and frustrated. It was at all places.....McDonalds. When was the last time you went to McDonalds? I used to love McDonalds, I prefer their fries over their competitors, their coke seems better than other places and it was one of my first jobs. I think I was 16, I was a cook. I have not been inside a McDonalds in a long time and was shocked when I walked into the Minot McDonalds the other day.
No "Welcome to McDonald's how can I help you?". I was greeted with silence. There were plenty of customers in there all silently standing there with tickets in their hands. No employees to be seen, just 4 kiosks where customers were expected to place their orders. I turned to where the counter used to be. It was blocked off with a plywood wall and a sign asking the customers to use the kiosks.
I hate these kiosks. I start punching buttons. I have in mind what I want, but do you think I can find it on that damn thing? Nope. I just want to double hamburger meal; one burger, two patties, fries and a drink. Should not be that hard, but I cannot find it. I ended up with a cheeseburger, small fry, small drink and 4 chicken nuggets. The machine pops out my ticket and I stand there like all the other zombie customers holding my ticket. I can see employees moving around back there, but still no customer interaction.
Then it happens, one of the employees comes out and speaks "159" she says, plops a bag on a rolling rack, turns around and walks away. Zombie 159 walks up to the rolling rack, grabs the bag and walks out. Eventually my number was called, and I too did the zombie walk and left never having any interaction with an employee or customer. I seriously felt like I was in the Twilight Zone!
But that is not what this post is about. Just a random observation from the week. What this post is about is some of the trials and tribulations we encountered while harvesting this fall. I already talked about a couple of them like the combine tire falling off and the combine fire. Talking to a Case service employee recently, we learned that Bob's was the 3rd combine wheel to fall off this fall and the 11th combine fire in this area. 3 of those combines were total losses.
But wait, there's more! Remember that day when it was so dusty and windy that you could barely see this cart and combine through the dust? As hard as it was to see during the daylight, think about how hard it was to see after dark in the wind and dust? Well, Chris found out that you cannot see at all. You certainly cannot see that big hay bale on the edge of the field that Chris ran into bending a couple parts of his header.
No parts needed to be replaced, but a couple had to be straightened. Then there was the gear box that went out. Sounds easy? 1 day and $8,500 (parts only) later, we had it replaced with us doing the work. A week or so later, in a totally unrelated event, Chris noticed a vibration in his combine. It was diagnosed to a cracked pulley and bent shaft. $2,000 in parts have been ordered, we have yet to fix that one.
There were several tire incidents while harrowing. One by me, one by someone who is not me but will remain nameless. I will only tell you this much about the nameless person, the first letter in his name is T and the last letter Y. I will leave it up to you to figure it out.
So here I am harrowing away with a 70' harrow going across the field. You generally do not look behind you too often as you are going across the field, just a glance as you turn corners and a glance or two over your shoulder as you go straight across the field. A glance over each shoulder lets you see the edges of the harrow, you really have to turn around to see the center of it. So, you can imagine my shock when I turned totally around to see the center and saw a totally shredded tire flopping around behind me!
I honestly cannot tell you if that happened one minute earlier or 10 minutes earlier. I am thinking the latter based on the condition of the tire.
The nameless person was harrowing the edge of the field when all of a sudden, the tire broke right off. Not fell right off, broke right off as in metal broke away from the frame. He says he didn't hit anything, but color me skeptical as that tire "happened" to break off in very close proximity of a power pole! In all fairness, it is hard to tell how close you are to an object with something that wide and I may have hit objects in my previous years as well.
Then there is the spilled grain. So frustrating, so avoidable. As a truck driver, you drive from field to farm unload and drive back to the field to do it all over again. And again, and again, and again. 10-14 hours a day. It is easy to become lax and forget a step. For me, that included not fully closing the bottom trap on the truck, not only once, but twice on two different days resulting in grain going right through the truck onto the ground. So avoidable, so frustrating. 
To clean this up, you need to go back to the farm, get a conveyor, bring it out to the field and shovel it by hand back into the truck.
There were a couple of getting stuck incidents, one with me in the skidsteer where I had to be pulled out and another by that same nameless person with the hay wagon.
These are a few of things that are all part of what happens on any farm U.S.A. If anyone tells you different, they are lying.
What else did we do this week? Took down fences, cleaned some outbuildings, cleaned some peas getting them ready to sell for other farmers in the spring. Cleaning takes out all of the bugs, split peas and other debris, leaving only (well, pretty much only) plantable seeds. Cleaning and filling a bin like the one in the background takes about 6 hours.
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Two weeks left up here, one week of work and one week of fun. I am kinda hoping they both go quick; I am ready to get home!
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