Wheat Harvest & My Trip to the Elevator

I want to share with you that we had a wonderful early wheat harvest last month.  There has been so much going on that I didn't have the time to post about it.

Dean's job is to combine the wheat and mine is to take it to the elevator.

My first stop is at the elevator stop light.  I wait while they take samples with a large probe.

The next stop is on the scales.  You want to keep the truck in between the yellow sides.  I have never heard of anyone getting off the edge and I don't want to be the first!

I sit and wait for the smiling lady to give me a slip telling me whether I should go to dump 1, 2, or 3.

I slowly drive off the scales and turn to the left.  The weight of the wheat will push the truck in directions that I don't want if I'm not careful.  

Below is the Dump that I will be dumping into today.

The grain is very dusty while it's being dumped and I keep my windows closed!  

It doesn't take long for a hopper wagon to empty.  Today's grain is being sold and we will be receiving a deposit in our checking account.  Farmer's only receive a few checks a year so we have to watch how we spend our money.  

Usually our farm expenses are slightly over half of what we make.  

The elevator will store the wheat until they sell it and it will be moved out by railroad or semi.

 

I have to get weighted again and this time I receive a weight slip with information on grain damage, weights, and prices.  I point the truck homeward bound.  This year I visited the elevator six times!

Above is a beautiful quilt that a friend from my quilt club showed at last month's meeting.

Happy Quilting!

Kay Lynne

The Last Round & The Last Leaves

I bet you thought that I was going to post about the last round on a quilt--sorry.  It's the last round my husband is making in our corn field.  It's a round that makes you smile and say it's finally finished!  This has been a rough farming season with all the rain we have had.  We are well blessed by not having the combine or the tractor and wagons get stuck in the mud.  I've heard of some horror stories of farmers getting the combine stuck and the their tractor stuck--what a mess!

I didn't get stuck, but did make some deep tracks.  This happened at night and I'm glad that I didn't stop with two loaded wagons so I would sink.  My husband made sure that I knew he seen the tracks and teased me about them.

Our neighbor gave me a big scare when I thought his combine maybe on fire, but I realized that he was combining beans that had been flooded.  He sure made a big dust cloud the covered the neighborhood!

 We have one last tree that just won't give up her leaves.  This week she just started to turn pretty colors.  Winter's on the way!

 

Maybe I'll be able to quilt soon when all the harvest work is done.  I'm tired, but it's a good kind of tired.  Working with my husband the last few weeks has been a real enjoyable gift!

Happy Quilting!

Kay Lynne

October Friday Night Sew-In Results & Beating the Rain

Actually I have been sewing a few hours every afternoon this week.  It has been gloomy and rainy here since Wednesday.

I've been working on one block at a time.

Here is what the back looks like.  I will have pictures when it's all done.

Early this week there has been a mad rush to beat the rain that was coming.  We did get all the soy beans in the river bottom field all combined before the rain came and flooded the field.

During harvest season it's not unusual for the neighbors to see me driving loaded wagons or following Dean with my four-way flashers.  If you live in farming country where there is slow moving equipment, please leave a few minutes early and be patient with us.  We don't enjoy blocking traffic and being in someone's way--we're just trying to get our crops in.

After all the rain, it will be a while before we're out in the fields.  Every year is different in farming and this year sure is different!

I did have quilt club this week and had a wonderful evening with the girls!

Happy Quilting!

Kay Lynne

Taking the "Drag" Out of Free Motion Quilting Part 2 & Harvest

I have had several quilting friends ask me to keep them up-to-date on my thoughts on hanging up quilts as you free motion.  This size is a lap quilt, which is a lot larger than the baby quilt that I worked on a few weeks ago.  There has been no problem.  The clamps give me the extra hands to keep things going smoothly.  I really think that more people would quilt larger quilts if there wasn't so much drag.  If you have some better ideas, please share :)

Thank you Leah for such a great idea!  It has changed my way of free motion quilting!

This week has been a blur of activity.  We started combining beans and things were going really well until a main shaft in the combine broke.  Taking things apart and putting it back together all takes time.  It can be very upsetting when you find that you put a part in backwards, which Dean did.  These things happen when you're tired and in a hurry.  Sometimes in farming there is a small window of time in which you need to get a job done or you just don't have an income.  So if you know a farmer that is a little stressed, give him a friendly smile which will make his day :)

 These pictures were taken within a few minutes of each other--just different directions.

Happy Quilting

Kay Lynne

Friday Night Sew-In Results: Thread Painted Cardinal, TQM Binding Tool, & Other Adventures

I finished my cardinal wall hanging just in time to give it away Saturday for a wedding gift.  We have been getting a lot of high heat and humidity this past week so this is my escape from the heat.  I'm happy with the results.  The background quilting is meandering feathers.  There are some other ideas that have been popping into my head that I want to eventually try when I get time!  My experiments will be posted.

For my pattern I used a photo from Vic Murayama.  If you haven't checked out Vic's bird photos, they are amazing!  Vic here's another thank you for use of your picture!  

Below is a binding tool that I have been using from TQM Products.  There is a really nice tutorial on YouTube that explains how to use the tool.  I never thought that I would actually use this tool, but I really like the results of a binding that you can't find a beginning or an end and it's easy.  I do want to point out that you have to watch the video very carefully.  The directions on the tool it's self can be misunderstood.  I give this tool a must have rating :)

The wheat is now history and a second crop is peeking up through the wheat stubble.  This is call double crop beans.  We have had plenty of rain to get them to germinate.  Hopefully, it's not too hot for these baby bean plants to survive.

Most of the crops look good and hopefully we will have a cooler weather next week.

Saturday morning I helped my boss set up this wedding cake that I had iced the day before.  Rushing a wedding cake from one air conditioned place to another is not an easy task, but it all turned out just fine.  The heat sure can be an obstacle when it comes to wedding cakes!

Hope everyone is having a nice summer/winter :)

Happy Quilting!

Kay Lynne

Em's Quilt is Finished and Farming Adventures!

Do you remember this quilt?

 Sometimes I have a quilt project that sits in my sewing room for a time because I just don't know how to quilt it.  I had some ideas and I worked on Em's quilt this spring and never finished.  It took me a while, but it's finally done!

 I had a lot of fun the quilting for my sis.

Now it's up to Em to bind it :)

In farming sometimes we just have to wait because the crop is not quite ready.  Dean done a few rounds and it was just too green yet.

So while we are waiting on the field to ripen.  Dean's always working on the combine and I'm always checking on him and asking questions.

Check out the plastic comb by Dean's elbow.  The wires attached to the comb monitor grain loss when the combine is blowing out the straw and dirt out the back.  It doesn't make sense to grow a crop of wheat only to lose it out the back.

He is always checking belts, chains, and greasing this big machine.  We made a trip to the elevator.

I've made many trips to the elevator by myself, but it's not often we do it together.  Below is a gentleman shaking the wagon to make sure every last grain is out.

Hope everyone one is having a nice 4th of July.  We have so much to be thankful for.

Happy Quilting!

Kay Lynne

P.S.  Dean maintains the combine--when was the last time we maintained our sewing machines?  Just cleaning out the lint build-up in your bobbin case and giving it a drop of oil makes all the difference in the world!

Let the Planting Rush Begin, Santa Wall Hanging, & Putting A Face On Joplin

The sun is finally shining and the corn has grown over an inch since last week.  The hail certainly didn't hurt it.

It's nice to get up in the morning and seeing the sun instead of the clouds and rain.  This has been the wettest May I have ever seen.  Dean started planting beans on Thursday.  We had the 3 inch rain and hail last Wednesday.  He wanted to plant corn, but that field was still too wet.  

I helped fill the planter boxes, which is no easy task.  The bags weight 44 pounds.

Saturday, Dean finally got his wish of planting corn.  Now I feel we have a new hope of a harvest.

The wheat has hail damage, but it doesn't look bad. We really won't know how much damage there was until we harvest it next month.

I finally finished my Santa wall hanging that our quilt club decided to do at a meeting. 

 We all had a great time together learning from each other.

I did do a little bit of thread painting on his beard, eyes, and nose.  

Joplin, Missouri has been on my mind because we have relatives that live there.  It really puts a face on a disaster when there are people there that you know.  Their lives were spared and their home, but I know it's been a really rough time for them.  Below is one of Carolyn's emails in her own words:

"This will touch many of you who went to Moundridge High School in 1960. Vaughn Lippoldt was the chorus director the year I was a freshman.  I re-established contact with him when we were planning the 2003 reunion and found out that 1) his mother was in a nursing home in Joplin and 2) his brother Victor lived less than a mile from where we now live in south Joplin.  I’ve just learned from my brother Dean (who used to sing in a barbershop chorus directed by Vaughn in western Kansas) that Victor’s youngest daughter and her husband were both killed in the tornado.  This was Vaughn’s niece, but I didn’t recognize her married name.  I had been checking the lists every day looking for Lippoldt.

On Tuesday I saw in the obituaries the names of our piano tuner’s wife and his 14-month-old son.  I didn’t know them, but the last time I saw David was in January when he tuned the piano for a chamber music concert for which I was arranging the reception.  Tom and I were talking about how we know that someday there will be a day when the front section of the paper will have a non-tornado related story and when the obituary listings don’t go on for pages and pages, but right now the cycle of grief seems unending.  One of Tom’s friends said he’s already been to three funerals this week. 

The New York Times has posted a couple of very graphic illustrations of the damage.

This one allows you to rotate 360 degrees around five different locations in town.  If you’ve never seen this kind of panoramic image before, just grab the picture with your mouse and pull to the right or left.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/27/us/joplin-panoramas.html

This second site is a series of aerial photographs.  This one allows you to zoom in or out by moving the +/- arrow on the right, and then you can adjust the before/after bar from right to left by dragging it.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/25/us/joplin-aerial.html?ref=us

There is progress, though.  When you drive through town now, there are huge piles of debris piled at the curbs in each block, and the serious heavy machinery clean-up by the National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers has already started.  It really does help to see small changes in the landscape.  It means that even though the task ahead seems immeasurably huge, every small step gets us closer to some sort of future that just has to be better.

I really appreciate all of the messages from everyone.  Thanks to all of you."

Check out the links that Carolyn sent me--they are unbelievable!
I just can't imagine the grief, survivor's guilt, and trauma they are going through.
My prayers and thoughts are with all the victims of this strange weather season around the world.

Happy Quilting


Kay Lynne

May Giveaway Day Winner & Hail on the Farm

We have a winner from my random number generator, my husband picking a number while raking leaves.  He picked the #52, which is Stephanie of Black Coffee Quilts.  Congratulations Stephanie!

Did you catch what I said?  Dean was raking leaves off our driveway because it hailed Wednesday.

Our hail was small compared to the hail a few miles from our home.  Other people had golf ball sized hail.

 This was one time I was really scared during the storm.  My son, a flight dispatcher, has always told me that "Hail=Tornado Warning".  We did not have a tornado, but the hail sure made me worry about having one.

Still with all the turmoil we need to see the blessings in the grass.  

If you click on the picture below, look close and you will see a baby fawn that had gotten caught in the storm.  I am sure that the mother deer found her because this was the only time we seen it.

 We had some damage to our wheat, but it's not a total loss.

We usually harvest wheat in early July and June is the month that the grain heads fill out.  The bent heads will probably not fill out because the plant is damaged.  We have hail insurance, but it won't cover the whole loss, but that's farming.  Our corn is still small and will grow back.

We also had a lot of rain and there are a lot of fields under water, but it will eventually dry off.

Things always seem to work out.

Please keep those who are suffering weather disasters around the world in your thoughts.  Our cousins in Joplin, Missouri are alive and safe.  It was such a joy Monday when I received an email that they were alright and their house was still there!

Happy Quilting

Kay Lynne

P.S.  I will be posting a Thread Painting Tutorial on Sunday :)