Oh this is so cool!

One difficulty we have found with the Kenworth is the bed is so tall you can just barely see in it ... if you stand hanging with your fingernails in the cab door.  We looked at Cab Cam kits  a couple places, but kept talking ourselves out of it.  We stopped at Bristol Hillbilly's (aka Palestine Auto Parts) one day and played with one Steve had on display.  I took a deep breath and said "OK"

Boy am I going to regret this.

Because now we will end up having to get one for the other trucks and one for the combine and if Wifey Dearest realizes how well it works we may have to get one for the Honda.

It worked out very well.  We (OK, Aman did the work while I was spending the day doing bookwork.  I'd MUCH rather have traded him jobs) put one camera on the front of the bed

and one at the rear pointing down at about a 45 degree angle.

That was a really funny incident.  Littlejohn is hauling corn for us, and we decided to make a run or two to Martinsville with the blue truck.  We'd never done it and had the time. We're unloading and the two guys in the photo were just kind of standing there unconcerned ... until one looked up, nudged the other with his elbow and pointed at the camera.  You could see him saying "Oh **** look at that"  What he didn't know is there is a microphone built in the camera as well.  I kind of wished I didn't have the volume turned down.

But like I said, it worked well for what we intended.  You can set in the cab and see how the truck is loading without risking falling by standing on your tip toes to see.

I mentioned it to a neighbor yesterday.  He said "Yeah, I put one on my combine.  Still backed the auger into the wall."

It's been a good week ...

Setting here Sunday evening with the wind blowing and snow falling and getting colder by the minute ... last week was a pretty good week. Looking back I'm going "Oh, that WAS this week."

We had 2 big accomplishments on the farm this week.  Monday Aman and I bought newer forklift together.  Nice little Toyota 42-5FG25

I don't know what all those numbers mean, but it runs on gasoline or propane, has air tires on it, lifts 4000 pounds and will reach higher than Gramp's shed.  It's probably what I should have bought in the first place when I bought the AC.  So I listed the AC on a couple ag classified sites.

Littlejohn FINALLY got some room Thursday for some corn.  Greg called a little after 7 AM and said "I'll have a truck there in 20 minutes."

I told him that was fine, but they were supposed to let us know a day ahead and it would probably be an hour before we got the tractor set up and ready to go.  They showed up about 10:20.  I just love waiting on trucks.

But we got everything set up and working and were waiting when he got there ... 1 truck and unloading was taking a while because there were lines..  So the next day we loaded out more corn.

By Friday afternoon we were down to the sweep auger.  But we didn't have enough time to clean out the bin before everyone had to be someplace Friday evening.  So I climbed back out and closed up everything and we went home.

Kind of wish now we were able to get it cleaned out.  We for sure won't be loading corn tomorrow. Rod Scott took this on the way home Sunday afternoon.  It's gotten worse now

As I set here I have been listening to the Sheriff's department handling multiple multi-vehicle accidents on I-70.  Dispatch just asked the Sheriff what road conditions were between here and someplace further west.  His response was "Terrible".

Yes, last week was a really good week.

Ever have a week when you didn't accomplish anything and took all week to do it?

My big accomplishment of the week wasn't really farm related.  I completed the Freedom Of Information Act Officer training online from the Illinois Attorney General Office.  I guess it qualifies as an accomplishment.  It should have been completed in June.  I started in June  ... 8th I believe.  First there was an internet glitch, then I got busy and it slipped my mind. all 58 pages of it. But now I am official certified as the FOIA for the West Union Community Fire Protection District and the Walnut Prairie Cemetery.  I had a couple other entities ask if I wanted to be their's as well.  I was even offered 3 times what the cemetery was paying me.  Still amounted to the same money...

Have gone on a couple fire runs this week.  We saved the frame on a caravan

It was fully involved before we arrived.  Same for a house trailer run today.  I saw the smoke on the way to a Birthday party, so I dropped Sue off and went to check out the smoke.  Before I got there we were paged out and told it was mostly burned already.

We are slowly working on a new web site.  In fact, try it out and see if you can gain access.  You are not supposed to be able to.  It is at www.BumpusFarms.info  Our goal is to set it up so landowner's can enter a password and access information about their property, planting info, yields, grain stored, photos, who knows what might tickle our fancy?  But we want it to be secure, so we are in the testing stage right now.  Right now it is hosted by Google.com.  I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that.

We've been contemplating selling some less used equipment. 

The 26 ft IH 496 ft disk we bought last year to disk in ruts was purchased with the idea if we didn't need it had some market value

 I've had a for sale sign the big orange wagon for a couple weeks.

  We don't need the little head hauler since a bigger one is coming with the combine

And of course there is the Ford tandem truck we have listed 2-3 places already.

Plus there are some things like the extra rim off the 8440 plus we have some 30.5 32 combine tires off the 2166 last Spring. As well as probably a few other things.  I'm just not sure I want to go through the hassle.