Weather. Work. Wellness.

               Today is Tuesday which means it is Deadline day at the paper. It is a solid 70 degrees outside with clear skies and hardly any wind which seems to be a rarity it North Dakota. Being from Virginia smacked dab in the valley of Leesburg surrounded by trees and the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah mountains, I never really appreciated the purpose of those land markings. I never did take into account that flat land with nothing to block the wind equals TONS of wind. Talking to the locals, they all say, "A day without wind in North Dakota, is a day to be thankful for." While I may be enjoying the breeze on a hot day now, I feel I may understand that saying a lot more come the colder winter months. I still can't fathom that I live in a state where, in the winter, you absolutely have to hook your vehicle up to something called a "block heater" to keep your car nursed from freezing over to death! Anyhow, I like to keep those nasty thoughts in the back of my mind until the time arises. 

               Mel started his new job at Case IH yesterday. Case IH is an agricultural equipment company that deals with everything from seeders, and sprayers to combines. What is a combine you ask? Well, being from a suburban area, I had to do a little research myself. To touch briefly, the combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from its combining three separate operations comprising harvesting, reaping, threshing, and winnowing into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers, and canola. The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock. These combines used to be manually operated by people. Nowadays, they are all connected via satellite and GPS and ran automatically without the assistance of people. What Mel does is installing, fixing and updating these GPS systems to make sure the seeders, sprayers, and combines are running efficiently. Taking him back to his agricultural roots, I believe he is enjoying this work quite a bit. I am very happy for him.



               It is now ten till 11 and I will be leaving work for the day very soon. With talk about good weather and agriculture, I will leave you with a quote by Andrew Jackson who described perfectly what the backbone of our great country really is . . .

"The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer form the great body of the people of the United States. They are the bone and sinew of the countrymen who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws."

Happy Trails.