Full Day's Work!

Another day full of lots of work!

I did morning chores and met up with the crew when I finished. Jeff was gone for the day so it was just Merle and Ross and I. To start things off we unloaded the horse trailer full of bales in the barn and got it ready for another load. The plan was to go out and finish baling and picking up what was left of our straw bales south of town. I dinked around getting ready to go, hooking up the trailer and such, and met the other two up at the shed where they were unloading some salt. Merle was going to stop at the house quick and fill out the fire report for the day before and Ross and I were going to get started ahead of him. But, Merle called us on the radio just as we were leaving and told us to hold up, turn around, and grab the fire truck. The bale fire just had some smoldering hot spots yet that Ross saw when we was coming in and he figured we could just as soon put them out. So, we loaded up and the two of us went up there and strung out what was hot and sprayed it down. While we were actually on our way there the sheriff's office called Merle wanting him to go put it out again- yep that's right we're just that on top of it! haha

So, we went back home and started to fill the truck again. In the mean time, I was wandering around looking for my cell phone that I though I lost at the fire, but it turned up behind the fire truck seat- phew! We kinda dinked around while the truck filled and then finally got back into the other pickup and drove towards town to pick up bales. Ross wanted to stop at his place for dinner, so we did. It was pretty nice to eat something at a normal rate and time- unlike the day before. We ate there and had Marva pack a lunch for Merle and then headed out to meet him. He just had a couple windrows left to put up so I finished them while he ate his lunch. We loaded bales for quite a while until we got two trailers full (around 200 bales), this only left about 35 out in the field. Merle sent Ross home with one load for Delbert that he could bring over there in the morning, I took one load and headed for home and Merle took the tractor and baler over the the shed where the baler gets stored to put it away for a while (woo hoo! lol). I didn't get a mile down the road when I realized I forgot to get some keys I needed from Merle. So, I got turned around and went back to get them from him. I worked out good because I was able to help him get that baler into road position at the same time.

I stopped at the grocery store and True Value and then finally got going towards home. My afternoon task was to mow the lawn at the other house. I can handle a push mower... easy job just hot. So, I pulled up and mowed for an hour or two until Merle showed up for a little bit and then headed back out to move some bale piles off the road before another one gets lit on fire. I finished the yard and then realized that I left all of my groceries in the truck the whole time...not a good idea. I came back to my house and unloaded what was left of them and did chores. By the time I got showered we were already late for our fire training meeting in town. But, they hadn't even started when we got there so it worked out good.

Training meeting are really cool because they are a refresher for some and a learning experience for others, like me. We worked in groups of three and had to hook up a fill hose on the taker at one spot. Get the jaws of life out and running in another, and run a cutting tool at the last spot. I didn't know how to do any of it, but it turned out not to be that hard- just engines and hydraulic lines- coolness! Afterward we drove around town in our groups and had to find the closest fire hydrants to certain locations. That was a really good deal for all of us so people have at least somewhat of a clue where they are. Many of them were harder to find than I thought because of weeds and different things.

We finally got out of there around ten, after I got done beating on the younger guys who were throwing tennis balls at me lol! O good times, good times. When we got home we spent some time out in the nasty rain putting vehicles in beacause it looked like it might hail. Afterward, I pretty much went home and went to bed. It was another really eventful day, and we got quite a bit done and hopefully got our fire completely out. It rained and stormed quite a bit that night.