8.27.20 Faith, Failures, & Farming

Two Sundays ago Mark came roaring into the yard telling me there was a major problem with one of our pivots. I told him to talk to grandpa and tried to get Greg to come home. Mark was instructed to just wait there was nothing that could be done. Later that night after solving another problem Greg and Mark went to take a look. This picture shows the tipped over tower. They found a big problem. The pivot twist and torked until one section was tipped over and another had walked itself about 90 degrees from where it should be to form a right angel to the twisted section. 

Where the final two towers bent the structure to take a right angle to where it was suppose to be. 

An aerial view very faintly under that word you can see where the pivot bends at a 90 angle and is intersecting the pivot line. Not good. 

We had planned on hiring a company to repair the pivot and we did not want to loose any more corn than necessary along with needing the ground and pivot line to be accessible we asked our neighbor to come silage chop a path in. The good news was as he chopped it became apparent there was good moisture in the ground. They got slightly stuck. 

The chopped corn went to some other cows, the very green feed has to be fed quickly but not too much or the cows will get sick. 

I was so happy to see the ears this full. I was worried sick we would get nothing from this 30 acre spot. 

A very good view of the bend and the twist and the field. Dry dirt here is white, this is a nice black all good signs. 

We were both in awe of how close the chopped got to the pivot and hte nice path he made. 

Big events like this are family affairs we all headed down to watch the chopper and truck. The girls enjoyed some extra time with dad. 

Merle was not left out, it was hot standing there in the humid bubble of growing corn. 

I put the kids up on a hay bale to get a better view. Last night Greg couldn't find Reed after working on the combine late, they eventually found him on top of hay bale asleep. 

So that was problem number one the twisted bent pivot. Later in the week maybe the next day the younger kids had presumably moved the wheel line out of the path of another pivot. A month or so ago it was in the pivot track and got pushed back until it snapped the riser. That was repaired and this time the younger hands thought 3 feet away from the monster pivots was enough. Apparently not. Pivots are gigantic machines that do not stop moving unless they are stuck or very broken. In the meantime they just run over and demolish what is in their path. 

 So we continue to learn and try again. The best part of this story though is after ten days of waiting and hand wringing over how to fix the pivot the repair company finally came. After the wait Lloyd decided that it had been too long and we would spend more time researching repair options. Thus the company left and no repair was made. That evening as Anna and I returned from taking the baby to the chiropractor she noted the cloudy sky. I dismissed her observation retorting it was just smoke. An hour later thunder was heard and the kids exclaimed it's raining! I was surprised but even more so when the boys came home from working at the shop where they witnessed the miracle. The clouds opened up and poured rain on that field. Our neighbor 100 yards away even the hay field across the road did not get as much rain as the field with the mangled pivot. Between the smoke clouded sky and tempered weather and that rain I have hope the corn will be ok. I'm humbled that God blesses us so individually and often just when we so hope for help. So even though life doesn't work as planned always there is still good and still ways to be good. We are blessed and life is good even though it is hard.