This past Saturday, a fire went through one of our fields of standing corn. Someone had dropped a cigarette in the field next to ours that was already harvested, and the shucks lit right up and the wind started blowing the flames across that field and into ours. Luckily, there were neighbors out combining beans who saw the smoke from the fire and one of them called the Remington fire department. When the fire department couldn't get the fire out with water, the neighbor went home and got his tractor and disk and disked through the corn so that the fire wouldn't go any farther. Dad and Mom headed over there as soon as they got the call and Meagan came behind with the 7120 and our disk. Dad took over for the neighbor so that he could go back to combining his beans. We're very thankful for quick-thinking neighbors! We lost around seven acres, but if it hadn't been for them and hard-working local fire departments, we could have lost a lot more.
Our tractor and disk in the field after the fire, with one of the fire trucks in the background.
The path disked through the corn so they could get to where the fire was burning.
As you can see from that last picture, there was a LOT of corn on the ground. It looked like the fire had burnt all the shucks and leaves off the stalks and the ears of corn just fell on the ground. So....guess what job we had on Monday!
You guessed it! We picked up corn for four or five hours. That was a long day! There was still some ashes and soot on the ground, so everyone wore their junkiest work clothes to get stained up. Dad combined the rest of the stalks that were burnt, but still standing, while we were picking up everything on the ground. If he had left them, the wind might have blown them over. It sure didn't look like there was much holding them up!
While the bigger girls and Nathan picked up corn, Nanna kept Grady entertained with ears of corn and corn cobs that had come out of the back of the combine.
Once we got the tractor bucket filled, Nathan would dump it into the combine to shell it and then Dad dumped it into the semi so we could take it to the elevator in Goodland.
...and here are everyone's faces after working in the dirt and soot all afternoon! :)
Once we finished for the day, everybody took showers and then had a nice, hot supper that Erin made for us. Chicken potpie and homemade rolls...yum! There is still quite a bit of corn to pick up, so we'll probably be out there a couple more days this week. Anybody want to help? :)
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