Added Beauty

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful;

they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.

- Luther Burbank

I agree with Luther Burbank 100%. (By the way he is a very distant relative of mine - isn't that a nice coincidence?) I picked these mums from my garden in the morning and stuck them above one of the monitors in my tractor. They were so pretty to look at all day - I wonder what the hired man thought when he got in the tractor after me last night.

The picture above shows what the inside of my tractor looks like on the right side. There are lots of screens and controls but most of them I can ignore. Some are used for planting and other operations John does during the year. The long skinny screen between the windows has my speed, gear and RPM, plus I can set the auto temp. control and see what it says on that screen too.

The control below is my master control for driving the tractor and operating the grain cart. A - controls the RPM, B - controls the gear. I use those while driving the tractor. C - will put the grain cart auger up or down, D - starts the power take off shaft. When the auger is up and the power take off has been started then I can open E to let the grain go up the auger and dump into the truck. F- will control the end of the auger. I can tip it up or bring it down if I need to to make sure the augered grain is falling into the middle of the truck.
It is very important to always have the auger up before starting D and E and to not put the auger down while D and E are running or you can have a pile of grain on the ground and something will break. That doesn't make hubby happy. So far I am remembering to open and shut down in the correct order. When I am filling a truck I keep my fingers on E so I can shut it down quickly if I need to or if something goes wrong. It is too easy to reach over with out looking and grab the wrong control if I am not careful. Most of the time I am looking over my left shoulder at the grain going into the truck.

The photo below is of the 2-way radio. We have one in the combine, tractor and trucks. We can talk to each other instantly and this works better than cell phones. John can tell me to move up farther with my tractor when he filling me up as an example.Well....so it goes, another day of harvest.

Lynn

Blog Extra

I added a new list on the right side of my blog today. I went through all my old blogs and found photos of all the finished projects I have posted so far. Most of them are made by me but there are a few made by others. I did this for me as well as anyone looking at by blog.

I can't remember if I have posted photos of older projects and if I have then where or when did I post them.

I didn't have to work in the field today as John was finding it hard to find dry enough corn or soybeans to combine. He did a little on some dry land corners (dry land areas are places that don't get irrigated). The dry land acres usually dry up sooner in the fall so they can be harvested first.

Was glad I didn't have to be out in the wind today as it was ferocious! Think it was up to 40 MPH gusts at times. One fellow's combine put out some sparks from it and caught the field on fire. The fire department was called as well as lots of area farmers. They got it out before it burned too much but some soybeans that had not been harvested for two farmers burned.

Area farms came rushing to help with tractors and disks and water wagons. They disked up fire breaks where they could and disked over patches of nearly extinguished fires. The heavy equipment really helped the fire departments out.

Think there were 4 rural towns fire departments at the fire. The fire departments here are all volunteer and they do a good job but don't have as many trucks as large city departments have. Besides that they have to haul water for the rural fires - farmers were also helping with that too.

They no more got that fire out and there was another just a few miles away that started in the middle of a field. They are not sure how that one got started but it was lucky that all those fire departments were close or it might have gotten close and burned a small town that was only a mile or less from the fire.

It is customary around here to always help a neighbor with anything if help is needed. By neighbor I mean the whole community. When my father in law was ill for several months and died during harvest time we had 15 to 20 people that came with combines, trucks and food for the workers and finished combining for John. They left their own fields to do this for us - you don't know how much that means until you are the recipient of such kindness.

All farmers know that they need to get everything harvested as quickly as possible as that is the whole years income sitting out in the field. Weather can damage the un-harvested crop so easily. We have had years when it snowed before we got it all out and years when it rained too much to get into the fields and had to track through the fields and prayed you didn't get stuck. There is always a sense of urgency during harvest so sitting idle is not easy for John or any farmer wanting to get in the combine and go.

That is all for now I guess - kind of got off on a tangent didn't I?

Lynn

Half Square Triangles

I didn't have to work in the field yesterday so stitched more of my 3" scrappy fabric squares together. Probably most of you have your own system but this is how I set up my machine to stitch them together. I don't have to mark any lines on the fabric using this method.

I put the 1/4" foot on my machine, lay a ruler or any straight edge under the foot with the right side even with the right side of the foot. Lower the presser foot to hold it in place then put a piece of tape along that edge. The tape needs to be as long as the squares you are sewing together. I use painters tape as it doesn't leave a residue when removed.
Start the fabric squares by placing one tip at the right edge of the presser foot and the opposite tip on the edge of the tape.
Start stitching, keeping the tip even with the tape. When you finish stitching that pair of squares continue sewing with no fabric under the presser foot for a few stitches then lay that next pair down in the same way and stitch.

After the entire batch of squares are stitched down one side, flip the squares and start stitching down the other side using the same method.
After both sides are stitched, cut them down the center between the two lines of stitching then press open and trim to size. Ta-Da, you're done!

My squares are 3" to start and the finished half square triangles are trimmed down to 2 1/2". There isn't a lot to trim but enough to make them perfect.

I have stitched 120 of these pairs together so far. I do have about 20 more to trim yet though. Think after these are trimmed I will start putting some of them in blocks.

Happy to be Stitching,
Lynn

iPod

I am loving my iPod, my birthday gift from John. I mentioned that I carry my cell phone and other necessities in my fanny pack while I am driving the tractor and this is one of my necessities! I have it turned on while I am driving back and forth from the combine to the trucks and while I am waiting at the end of the field. I do turn it off when I am driving beside the combine being filled and when I am unloading on the trucks. I don't want to get distracted and those activities take all my attention.

I like to listen to audio books and have loaded several I downloaded from LibraVox, a website where you can download books or listen on line for free. The books they have are older books in the public domain but are still fun to listen to. There are lots and lots of titles to choose from but right now I am listening to "Alice Adams" by Booth Tarkington. It is an interesting book and the reader is good too. Some readers are better than others of course.

I listen to books when I sew too and listening to a book makes house cleaning not so bad!

Lynn