RV Adventures

You know that movie Groundhog Day? In the movie, Bill Murray lives the same day over and over and over.   https://youtu.be/GncQtURdcE4

I feel like we are living our own personal Groundhog Day experience.  Everyday is the same…the sugar beet harvest is shutdown due to weather and no one is happy about it. Not only do sugar beets need to be brought in, there is also corn and soy beans to harvest.  But this year -nothing- is being harvested!  There is not one piece of equipment moving.  When we were here two years ago, at this point in time all the soy beans were in.  The farmers say this is a very unusual situation and can’t remember the last time the harvest was delayed this much.

Jim found this graphic of how much extra rain has fallen since the harvest has started. The fields Sproule Farms is getting beets off of are all in the red circle…most of which have gotten 2 inches -above normal- of rain in the two weeks the harvest has been scheduled.

Let’s see what has happened since we last reported in on Day 10.

Day 11

We experienced a record low of 13 overnight.  The sun came out during the day to help melt the 4 inches of snow we got.

This is a first…icicles hanging off the Blue Flame.

There is Jim, up on a ladder getting snow and ice off the top of our slide out.

Day 12

This morning we experienced a record low of 9 degrees.  We also discovered that our lithium ion batteries that power all our 12 volt devices don’t like cold weather. How do we know that?  Something started humming at 4:30 a.m.  I got up and flipped on some lights (12 volt LED lights) to investigate.  The lights came on at 25% of normal brightness and I couldn’t determine the source of the noise.  Was it outside or in?  Jim was up a few minutes later and discovered it was our 12 volt water pump (under the bed) humming.  Why?  Jim got out his voltmeter and measured the voltage at pumps at 8 volts instead of 12.  What????  Our brains finally started working and we noticed an error on our battery control display.  ERROR!  And the 12 volt control board on the refrigerator was complaining.

That number in the red circle is the crucial number, the temperature of the batteries. In this picture, things are fine.  But apparently anything low enough will cause the system to cease working and red errors are displayed. We KNEW not to charge below 32 degrees (note one of Jim’s fancy labels stating that). But we didn’t realize you couldn’t also use them if it got too cold!

Anything running on 120 volts (like space heaters) was fine because it is being powered by 50 amp shore power.  The shore power also charges the lithium ion batteries that power all the 12 volt systems.  So Jim ended up outside at 5:00 a.m. moving the 120 volt space heater we had in the water line basement compartment to the lithium ion battery basement compartment.  With a little heat, within 10 minutes the batteries were back above 32 degrees and all systems worked again.  Phew.  That was a new one.  Lesson learned

Jim reached out to Sproule Farms (his employer here) to see if they had a spare space heater, because we now had water lines AND batteries to keep warm.  They bent over backwards to help us out.  That is how desperate they are to keep us around.  Jim came back with a space heater, an extra extension cord to plug in the block heater of our diesel fueled Jeep and an offer to let us park the RV in their shop if need be.

How do you keep a diesel fueled Jeep happy in cold temperatures? You plug in the block heater to keep the engine somewhat warm.

This day concluded with 40 or so RVing Harvest Workers meeting over at the East Grand Forks American Legion for dinner and drinks.  Emphasis on drinks.  Workers were continuing to leave day after day.  It’s to the point where we wonder if there will be enough workers left to run all the beet pilers at the receiving stations.  If they can’t run them all it will stretch out the harvest even more.

I should also mention the woman who was hired as the Harvest Host left this day.  She was supposed to stick around everyday and help out the workers with mail and any errands the workers might have.  Nope…she (along with a few others) gave up and left.

Day 13

Still sitting around.  I DID get a new quilt top cut out.  Oh, and we saw the movie First Man.  So that is something.

Day 14

Let’s call this the day of the meltdown.  My meltdown.  Sometime over the past couple of days the fan the bedroom (rear) air condition (A/C) started acting up…as in not running.  That A/C has a electric heat strip in it and will blow warm air like a space heater.  Well, the fan won’t start turning on its own now.  This has happened before, usually Jim can remove the cover, loosen up the fan, and start it spinning while I turn the A/C on.  I always spread an old sheet to keep the bed clean.  Well, this time the sheet wasn’t spread far enough out and greasy crud was spewed all over our clean bedding.  #*&^$*&#  I ended up mad, frustrated, and going stir crazy.  That’s how I ended up at the grocery store at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.  An hour of walking through the aisles with normal people allowed me to calm down, gain perspective AND get some groceries.

There WILL be two new air conditioners in our future, probably in Arizona in January, since the motor bearing on the front A/C unit went out a week ago.  We just have to tell ourselves, they are 14 1/2 years old.

Day 15

And this is today.  It snowed again overnight.  I tried to rotate the TV antenna to fine tune a TV signal.  No luck…it’s frozen in its current position.  The temperature was 23 degrees when Jim got up at 5:00.  At almost 9:00 a.m. it is down to 19 degrees.  Enough already!

And we wait…until 10:00 when American Crystal Sugar will update the status of the harvest on their website.

The weather this week looks decent.  The harvest will start again this week…it’s just a matter of when.  In the meantime, I’m going to go and do some laundry.  I need to get the A/C fan crud off our bed sheets.

UPDATE:  I just checked the website.  No working today.  Next update is tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. To quote from the American Crystal Sugar website, “There was significant healing that occurred over the weekend from last Friday morning’s record low temperature. Unfortunately, the temperatures last night reinjured the beets not allowing us to open today either. Based on the damage that occurred again last night, we now feel the earliest we would be able to harvest will now be Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday. We will continue to monitor fields and update you again Tuesday by 10 am”

Life goes on.