Nebraska - Equipment Breaks

This is a series of my impressions of our trip last week to visit Nancy, Rex and Pat on their ranch/farm in Nebraska

Equipment breaks - A lot of their time is spend ferrying equipment, trouble shooting equipment, and repairing equipment.  Fortunately Pat is a very good mechanic and can repair most anything.

We arrived on Thursday and Pat was supposed to be planting at a leased field 20 miles north.  When we first got there he was repairing a fuel line on their big tractor, and had to wait for a Fedex shipment of a part at noon the next day.  Most of Friday was spent waiting for that piece and installing it.  On Saturday night when he was supposed to be finally planning he discovered a problem with the exhaust system and repaired that Saturday night and Sunday.

On Friday, Rex drove up a piece of equipment which had a flat tire on the way up, 3 miles from the field. He had been watching the tires but obviously took his eye off it for a few seconds and shredded the tire.  While Pat was repairing that tire, he also fixed another tire on a tractor they they borrowed from their landlord at this field.

Later that day Rex and Rod started to take another piece of equipment named the "Weeble Wobble".  It is so named because when you fill the container with seeds, it leans to one side and wobbles, but it does not fall down.  They ran out of gas only 5 miles into the trip and we took them a 5 gallon tank full of gas and before they could start it up, they needed brake fluid which we hurried to get before the store closed at 6pm. There seemed to be quite a bit of discussion as to whether this particular piece of equipment has a long term future in their process.

We did not see much planting because of these equipment problems, but I know they do plant a lot because the sunflowers we observed were absolutely beautiful. I am sure Pat is driving his tractor right now, as he plants his fall crops, fingers crossed the equipment is behaving.

Cousin Nancy and me, and Pat's sunflowers

These fields are beautiful

Sunflowers are supposed to face the ground so birds don't get to the seeds