#170. or, How's it Going? It's......going.

  I was really excited to dive into the harvest, so I could tell you all about the progress that I was making, and how much I look forward getting our combine rolling each year. Not because it's easy. But rather, because this is what it's all about. The culmination of a series of events, set into motion some 5 months back, when I hooked up my tractor to put seeds, some not much bigger than the head of a pin, into the ground. Then looked after those plants to the best of my ability, with the help of a preferably  favourable Mother Nature, to hopefully fill all of the grain bins we own, and maybe a few borrowed from the neighbour as well.

  Mother Nature has been kind. Except maybe that rainy stint while I was trying to make hay. But the Fall has been an exceptional run of harvesting weather for us. My combine, on the other hand, has not been quite so cooperative. 

  I wanted to tell you about how awesome my combine is. And how over the winter, while it was in the shop getting a proper going over from one end to the other so I could avoid any issues come harvest, we discovered it was actually a prototype combine. The tractor company I use, that makes green equipment, will make a handful of units, say about 30 or so, that have all the specs of the next piece of equipment they want to introduce, and sends those units out into the world to be tested before they begin the actual production run of that next unit. Turns out I own one of those combines. So, it's sort of like the Batmobile of 9750 combines. It looks like a 9750 combine on the outside, but on the inside, it's an angry thumping mass of gears, horsepower and hydraulics that can chew up and spit out tiny little pieces of your run of the mill 9750 combine.  

  That's what I wanted to talk about. Instead, I think I'll tell you about how I've made so many early morning parts runs into town, that the fellow I meet on the bicycle each morning and I have now become casual acquaintances, and we've stepped up our relationship to the "good morning" nod, as we pass on the street, just before the only lighted intersection we have in town. Or that how it crossed my mind, on the 3rd of 4 trips to the dealership last Saturday, the staff there might not be so happy to see me for my cheerful demeanour and engaging  personality, but more so, for my contributions to their winter vacation. 

  But, I've been getting the bugs out, and there have been good days as well. I've decided that I might be able to eliminate any further stress by replacing the header portion of my combine with an upgraded one that is supposed to feed the crop into the combine a little more evenly. The bad thing is, the one I want is 6 hours away and I have to send my old header along in trade, so basically, I'm buying this newer header unseen, except for a handful of email pictures, and on the word of the salesman, that it's a good unit. What can go wrong? People buy shit on the internet all the time?

  ............also, I'm not entirely sure I was supposed to mention the whole prototype combine thing. So if people in green jackets and dark sunglasses show up and I mysteriously disappear, you'll at least have an idea of what happened to me.