September 9

View of the day-Clouds that let go the rain with no rhyme or reason.

The sun was shining bright and early (for us) and it looked like it would be a great day for combining canola.

We moved the grain truck over to the field of canola east of Carlyle shortly before lunch. We gave one of the farmers a ride back to their yard, then went back to Kim's field to get the combine after he fueled it up for us. Al serviced the rig, Marilyn did the windows and reset the computer so it would monitor things properly. Al complains that since ProHarvest updated our yield and moisture monitor, he doesn't know how to change things like header width or crop. This means it is pretty much useless for figuring out yield or acres covered.

Once the settings were all changed, Al went out to the field and started combining the canola. Marilyn went back to the camper to make lunch and take down the tent, just in case the wind came up and a catastrophe should happen. When she got back to the yard, everything had been dismantled and not by the wind. All that was left to do was bundle up the poles and secure the folded tent.

Back out at the field, Marilyn took over combining for Al and he went into the farmers grain cart for the rest of the afternoon, taking a break when his truck was full. Marilyn had just made a couple of rounds and was curious as to how fast Al had the rotor going under load, when he suggested a ground speed, Marilyn stated that she was being cautious and just didn't want to plug the rotor. Al replied that the feeder would plug long before the rotor would. The rogue clouds would dump rain at random, never enough so it was running off the header, but enough to make the straw tough. We were along the highway and after one of the showers the vehicles were spraying up water which meant it wasn't just a sprinkle. Not to worry, we had the same thing with the oats the other day, so off Marilyn went...for about 200ft...you guessed it...the rotor plugged.

Al came over and we took the shields off to examine the slug that was refusing to let the rotor turn, and it really wasn't a bad one, just one thick band of wet straw. Once we dropped the concaves and backed the rotor up to dig out the slug by hand, it was clear enough that the combine was able to cough up what was left. It was nice of the farmer to stop by to supervise and note how tactfully we "discussed" the various reasons for the slug and how to clear it. We do have our own language when it comes to these sorts of things. It didn't even take twenty minutes from plugging to getting rolling, so it was just an excuse for "fresh" air.

At one point during the day, the farmer went over to do a test on their wheat, thinking it would go, but it was still 17% moisture so we stayed where we were. The rest of the day was uneventful, with Al in the cart picking us up on the go there was no stopping until we quit at 8:00 covering 100 acres.

A good day even with the small delay...