It's been a long time, but we're back! Not that we've gone anyplace, we just haven't been paying too much attention to the farm site.  It's been so long I kind of forget how to do things on here.  But it will come back to me.

Harvest 2018 has started.  We shelled about 30 acres of corn Wednesday. It was a reminder of how things have changed. We did a truckload before lunch, stopped, went to town and ate, came back, filled the dryer bin, and were done about 5:00.  When Dad put that bin up it took 2-3 long days to filling it.

Today started working on the Stirator in that bin.  Not an unusual thing.  What was unusual was I did something to it I'd never done before.  The machine pivots at the center and a collector ring provides power to the motors The cover in the middle came loose and let it run full of corn. I cleaned it out and discovered a burn spot in one of the straps.  So I took it out and turned it over and reinstalled it.  I've worked on these for about 45 years and never did that.

Finished the day up loading beans out of another bin.  It's been a long struggle.  Between equipment problems, breakdowns, illness, lack of trucks, on and on I've never taken this long to clean out a bin or had old crop in the bin this late in the season.  We finally borrowed Littlejohn's vac and hopefully (weather cooperating) will have it cleaned out tomorrow.  Don't count on it.

Need to get back in practice

I've been notably absent from the farm page the last year or so.  We've been fairly active on Facebook  (https://www.facebook.com/Bumpus-Farms-119521951452317/) and kind of ignored www.BumpusFarms.us  I'll get better.

I may have to take lessons on how to do this again!

This has been a very unique year.  I know, all of them are  But we went from pretty good to way too wet

to way too dry.


We are not done with harvest ... maybe.  We have about 40 acres of beans planted July 26 after the river went down.  They have been frosted and at this point are not harvestable.  But we are holding off on the disk until we are sure there is no chance.


Other than that we are just about caught up!  Buck has been following Aman around with a disk or ripper and we have all our fall tillage done that can be done.

A "slow" August ...

Yeah, I know.  I should post more often than once a month  I thought this was supposed to be a slow season on the farm! Let's see, what has happened since last time?  Oh, the bins we were pouring concrete for?  They're up

Yes, It's a poor photo.

The irrigators we were running pipe and wire to?  They are going.

And you can get a Hummer stuck when the wheels get mud packed and it slides off in the trench we had made.

 On a personal note we have been to reunions

and weddings

and funerals

 

and more reunions

Met up with an old school friend we had not seen in 40 years
Took us a while to track Larry down.
He's not on Facebook but his sister is!

 

We've done home remodeling

with help of course.

We've gone on fire runs

and field days

We've worked on irrigators
 WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO OIL?

 No, that rod is NOT supposd to stick out the bottom of the oil level gauge.

Where did all THAT come from?

The library asked if we could come up with a display or two.

Here is one of harvesting equipment

 The 560 with mounted picker was Dad's favorite

And we still have a few projects to get finished before fall

We've pretty much kept busy down on the farm.

I'm beginning to understand what Scot said

When I was driving the gas truck one of my customers said "I get up.  I work on irrigators, I go to sleep."  I noticed later he never mentioned going to bed.  At times I have felt the same way this year.  Adding 5 new irrigators really hasn't been that much of a problem.  Other than the normal start up problems getting all the kinks and wrinkles smoothed over they have been trouble free.

But then there are the older ones.

We replaced the engine on the Drake Place south pump this winter. I mentioned back in September it had some issues (http://bumpusfarms.blogspot.com/2013/09/been-making-water.html) The engine had a lot of hours, the Rockford PTO had a few problems.  Last year we replaced the turbo output because the cast iron rotted away and broke.

 3 little springs that fell out of the clutch.  I guess they weren't too important. and the teeth on the clutch plate are almost gone.  So we replaced it with a new propane engine

I love how quiet it runs.  I've done things I never did before, like replace a gearbox on a tower  A right now I have a safety wire broken on a towable

We're trying to find a wireless solution.  The Drake Place north pump lost the PTO (think heavy duty clutch)  Everyone I talked to said it was fixable. Or for $200 more I could have a new one.  8:00 the next morning I was in Evansville picking up a new Twin Disk PTO

We've done a few other things. Like take out trees

 TIMBER !

 and more trees. Dee can make a big mess pretty quickly

We cut down 2 trees at Mom's and 9 trees at Neal's.  Most of the big wood was taken by neighbors for firewood.  But someone still had to pick up limbs and sticks.  I called for reinforcements

 And then for more fun w picked up limbs and brush in the cemetery

We've also put in water lines

and poured concrete and moved grain bins

And we did something else I've never done, put fungicide on commercial corn

I'm about ready for a break.

Bumpus.farm is here!

WE'RE EXCITED! OK, we're farm geeks, which means we get excited over odd things.  Mike got this email today:

Dear Michael Bumpus,

GoDaddy has successfully secured your domain. BUMPUS.FARM
is now yours, congratulations!  Thanks for registering with us.

No, we're not sure what we will do with it.  For now www.BumpusFarms.us and www.Bumpus.Farm will forward to the same blogspot page.  www.BumpusFarms.info goes to a page we haven't developed yet.

This all developed when we discovered BumpusFarms.com was already registered to someone in Ohio.  Mike decided to jump in and get control of the .us and .info addresses while they were still available.  When GoDaddy announced the .farm address was becoming available we jumped on it.

First post this year ? !

Really? I haven't updated the farm page since December? I guess we have been putting more stuff on the Farm's Facebook page and kind of ignoring this one. Snow, posted roads, crashed trucks, new equipment, just all kinds of things to update.  For now I'm going to put up a few random photos taken since the first of the year kind of showing how the winter went

 We moved the office!

 It is now upstairs and has much more space

 and interesting art work on the walls

 It snowed.  And snowed

 Eventually we were able to haul grain

 Although there were special challenges this year

 Did I mention it snowed?

 Truck tires needed repaired

 And tractors needed repaired

 And trucks needed repaired ...

 although one got replaced

And now we are waiting for it to dry enough to plant.