Blogs from Dalhart, Texas, United States, North America - page 2

Here are some photos of us opening up a corn circle. The Choppers are powerful enough (1000hp) to fire the feed over one truck into a second truck behind. I reckon firing it into the back of one truck trailing the chopper looks impressive.... read more

Last week we were cutting Insurance corn in an area called the South Sedan. Insurance corn is where the farmer is writing it off and claiming it on their policy. We are chopping the crop or some of the crop to try and salvage some feed. It's about 30 minutes drive from Dalhart towards the New Mexico boarder. After all the chopping was done. we then needed to move the service trailers and other machinery to the next location. I got the tractor and the merger. It took me 1 hour and 40 minutes to get from the field to the Dalhart yard. A Merger is a machine that is about 20 wide and merges several rows of cut grass into one. The tractor has more dials than I've ever seen. I dared not touch any ... read more

Here are the photos that I took. Not sure they show the real picture. To give you some idea of the scale of the landscape, add 3 photos on either side and it looks the same. Today (12th July) I started work with a 20mm bolt screw embedded in one of my 8 truck tyres. So off to Heisers Tyre Service I go with a REAL coffee so that the guys to fix it. Once it's fixed it's into the wilderness to catch up with my colleagues who are hauling chopped immature corn crops that stand between 3 ft and 5 ft high. There is a drought here that is evolving into a disaster of epic proportions and is now the worst that the area has experienced in over 100 years. Everywhere I look I can ... read more

Dalhart, Texas, our home away from home for six months. Elevation 4000ft above sea level, in a lil ol trailer park on the wrong side of town. Once a fortnight I venture into the main streets of town, although you'd never know it as it is deserted most all the time, and you can't tell which shops are open or which have been shut down, and find the bank. Drop off pay checks for the week at the drive through. I kid you not! My first experience of this instantly bought to mind the Flintstones, as the way it is done is as follows... Drive up to available drive thru lane, wind window down, you will be greeted by the teller who watches from the bank window apx 20meters away. Any transactions undertaken are placed in ... read more

With temperatures in the mid to high 90s the ride home each night without aircon in the car (or my sauna on wheels), makes for one rather unpleasant trip! The thoughts running round my head on these occasions are along the lines of the headlines, "woman found melted in car, on side of road"! Trent, one of our bosses, is the guy apparently who can fix my aircon problem and has said that it's the squeaky wheel that gets fixed, so tomorrow begins the gentle squeaking via text messages until my dilemma is solved! Added interest to these daily journeys, besides the dead and decaying animal carcasses, is the constant navigation around the remaining bits and pieces of tyre rubber and wire. These an range from tiny spindly bits to pieces as big as a tyre ... read more