No time to waste

They were calling for rain the night before, so the combine was brought in out of the field. It got to spend a cozy night in the machine shed. "Shed" sounds misleading. Growing up, the lawnmower was kept in the shed. Garden tools were kept in the shed. Here, on the farm, all manner of very large (and very small) things are kept in the shed. The shed is actually a huge building. But, I digress...

The next morning, they decided that it hadn't rained enough to keep them out of the field so they got the combine back out of the shed and unloaded it. It was still full of corn from cutting the night before. Not to mention covered with stalks. See them piled up below the window?

Normally, the combine would just stay out in the field. It takes a lot of time (and money) to move a combine.

Ted's faithful pal, Buddy, is always near Ted...or Ted's truck. (See him waiting for Ted to get out of the combine?) Back before Buddy got old and his hip got bad, Ted use to carry him up into the combine so that he could ride with him. Now Buddy is content to just lay near Ted's truck... patiently waiting for him to return.

This is the grain cart. It can be loaded "on the go" driving next to the combine in the field, saving lots of valuable time. When the grain is ready, every second counts. Especially with all of this rainy weather. The grain cart then travels to a semi or a grain truck and loads it up. (Grain gets shoveled around a lot...no pun intended.)

Soon these will all have gone back out to the field...whichever one they are in today. That reminds me, we have some pretty odd field names. But that's a topic for another day.