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| Hard to figure out where to put the Standing Rush watermark on this image without covering up tools, pieces, and parts; Roy is a miracle worker |
A lot can happen in a few short days -- much less a few long, summer days. Roy returned from a week of vacation late last Thursday night to two pumps running, water levels continuing to drop, and a dry weekend forecast. The stars were finally seeming to align for our second round of millet seeding early this week.
But when he checked on the diesel pump early Friday morning, the motor was running but that was about it. We had thrown a main bearing sometime overnight and the results weren't pretty. Five broken belts lay strewn on the ground, and as a result, there was no water to be found running through the discharge pipe.
Roy and Nate spent all day and some of their evening on Friday taking things apart and tracking down parts. While some good luck and a few well-placed favors got us very close, they couldn't get things going before nightfall. The only good news was (1) that they were very close, and (2) that they had successfully opened a pipe on the other side of the East Marsh that had been stuck (closed) since we took over the property. This newly opened conduit allowed for a much more consistent feed of water to our electric pump, so at least we continued to head in the right direction -- albeit with one pump instead of two.
Amazingly, Roy had the diesel going again by mid-morning on Saturday, and it's still going strong as of today. Unfortunately, so is the rain. After an absolutely picture-perfect weekend of dry, sunny weather, we have had near-constant rain since before sunrise this morning. A large cell of "torrential" rains just passed, with some areas receiving rain at a rate of more than 3" per hour. That's an absolute deluge! It looks like the rain is going to be with us for at least another few hours, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out.
As of this morning, Roy was finally seeing the mudflats we have been working toward for weeks (months). The plan as of 9:00 am was to call for the plane to fly in the millet tomorrow morning. With more than 1" on the ground thus far (according to the electronic rain gauge), I have my doubts . . .
(P.S. Truth be told, we expected this bearing to go out long ago. Roy thought it might only last a couple hours once we got the motor running for the first time. It lasted for a couple weeks. This will be another expensive setback, it time and in dollars. But such is life when operating equipment that has sat idle for years. We just have to keep pressing on.)