A HARVEST STORY

Last week I added a new app to my iPhone.  It's one for "Our Daily Bread"  a devotional book that I like to use.  I took Ashley back to Milestone on Friday after she spent the week with Grandma and attended Vacation Bible School at Trinity, Torquay each morning.  I stayed overnight at the Diekrager farm at Milestone so read the devotion on Saturday morning.  It was based on Psalm 121, the psalm that Howard aways read before anyone travelled.  His uncle, Pastor Albert Vinge, used to do that too and that's where Howard picked up the idea.  When Sandra and I were in Norway, Todd read it in Norsk before we left.

Saturday's devotion started off with a story about a plane about to land at an airport where the air traffic controller had fallen asleep on the job!  The plane landed safely in spite of this.  The author went on to say that we have the ultimate traffic controller, God, who neither slumbers nor sleeps. "My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." (121: 2)  The writer added" You can count on it - God knows the impending dangers and will tirelessly direct the traffic of your life for your good and His glory. (Rom 8:28 which is one of my favourite verses).

After I had read the scripture verses and the short devotion, I prayed that God would give Clare and his crew a safe day in the harvest field.  I left for home in the morning, stopped at Weyburn Co-op for groceries and refilled two five gallon jugs with drinking water.  When I got home I sent a text to Kirk (yes, I can text now that I have a new phone!) asking if they wanted supper in the field or at home later.  He answered, "I'd say, eat in the field".  I checked with Clare what time I should bring supper out and he replied "6:30"  I thought he'd have said 5:30 or 6, but he's the boss so I went with that and got busy fixing pork chops with gravy and cooked potatoes and carrots to add to the crock pot.  I was ready to leave shortly after six.

When I arrived "down east", Clare and his young helpers, Carter and Miles were just coming to the bins so the timing was perfect.  Clare was just finishing his supper when Don Hurren drove up in Clare's pickup.  He had been combining canola south of our land and wanted to test the moisture in the grain before keeping on.  He had his semi at the field but didn't want to drive that home so had phoned Clare to see if someone could drive him the few miles to his farm.  Clare didn't answer so he thought that he'd call Kirk on the combine but he didn't know Kirk's number.  A call to Kirk's home phone gave him the number he needed from a helpful Lindsay.  Kirk answered and sent Carter down to pick up Don.  Instead of driving Don home, Clare told him to just take his pickup and also asked him to bring back a tool that he needed.  When Don got back with the needed tool,  Don and Clare were off to Don's field.  When they drove past Kirk on the combine just east of the road, Clare noticed smoke coming from the back of the combine and some small fires in the straw behind the combine!  They tore over to Kirk and got his attention to stop.  His cellphone was dead, probably because he was close to the border and the phone had been roaming, using extra power.

Clare left Don and Kirk in charge of fire fighting, and tore back to the bins to get another fire extinguisher and the service truck.  We knew something was definitely wrong when Clare's pickup almost left the ground when he came back to the bins!! Meanwhile, Don and Kirk tackled the problem with whatever was available - the fire extinguisher was soon emptied as were bottles of water and juice. The two jugs of water that were still in my Escape were used to refill the fire extinguishers!  Carter and Miles were sent off in Clare's pickup with a shovel to put out the small fires that had started behind the combine.  Don used a welding glove to help snuff out fires in the back of the combine.  Kirk emptied a cooler and used that to stamp out fires.

Clare decided a fire guard was needed to keep any fires from spreading so decided to hook up the old Friggstad cultivator that was parked by the bins and hadn't seen action for a few years.  I helped him put the pin in and off he went with one wing in the air as it had no wheel on that end!  But it worked and he was able to make a guard around the strip of chaff behind the combine.  The boys were able to snuff out the small fires before they got any bigger so things were getting under control.

The fire in the combine was still uncertain.  It had burned a hydraulic steering hose, spraying oil on the fire which  had made it flare up all the more.  The combine couldn't be moved as that hydraulic hose controlled the steering.  When the fire was deemed out, a hose from Clare's other combine that was needing repair work, was "robbed" and put on this one.  Later in the evening, it was driven back to the Johnson farm as they didn't want to take chances on leaving it in the field overnight.  They also drove back to the field after dark to be sure there were no fires that were still smoldering.

So it was an anxious couple hours with the guys coming home with oil soaked, dirty clothes and shoes smelling of smoke and ashes.  But the combine and crop were safe!

And was it a coincidence that Don and Clare just happened to be driving down that road just as the combine was spitting out chaff on fire?  Those of us at the bins could not see the combine as it was behind "Oscar's dugout" and the banks hid it from our view.  Don's call to Kirk was the last one made before Kirk's cellphone was dead so he would have been unable to call for help when he would have noticed the fire in the field behind him.  And the wind!  It had been blowing hard all day but calmed down about 15 minutes before the trouble started.  I don't usually carry two five gallon jugs of water in my vehicle but I had them when needed that day.  Clare had added the shovel to his pickup that morning thinking he might need it to clean up spilled grain. The 6:30 supper in the field was when and where we needed to be.  And Don was the perfect guy to arrive on the scene.  He has served on Torquay's volunteer fire department and has had training in fire fighting.  He was cool headed and took charge with quick decisions and the right procedure, even though lacking in much fire fighting equipment!  Why was he so persistent in getting a ride home to check his grain?  Was it God nudging him so he could be right where and when he was needed to help a friend in trouble?

A poem at the end of the devotional answers the above questions and I quote D. DeHaan
"When trouble stalks the path we tread,
We need assurance, Lord to know,
That all our steps are being led-
That you, our God, are in control."

The devotion was entitled "Sleepless in Heaven" and can be found at www.odb.org  When you reach their website, type in Sleepless in Heaven in the search box in the right hand corner and that will take you to Saturday's devotion. When this event took place yesterday, I just knew that I had to blog about it today!  The boys agreed with me that the timing was just too perfect to be a mere "coincidence".  At the end of the day the words to the doxology are fitting "Praise, God, from whom all blessings flow".