May 30, 2010

View of the day-It's official, the 2010 harvest has begun as Al does a test.

We were up early waiting to hear from the MacDon support, they called to let us know they were on their way and would be stopping at the camper. There was a different guy that came out...a gentleman Marilyn was not introduced to, so we will call him 'Stan'...because he originates from Uzbekistan. Al got a ride out to the field with him and Marilyn got lunch ready...just in case we got going and couldn't get back to throw something together, then came out with the pickup. Stan had some very interesting tales to tell and was really thorough walking us through the workings of the header and getting it into transport mode after he got everything tuned in.

After Stan left, we moved the header out to the road where the combine had been parked and was waiting to get started. We managed to get it hooked up on our own, so we had been paying attention to our lesson from the master and we even were able to put the wheels and hitch back where they belonged. Al cut a sample then we took it into town to the coop to get it tested...12.1% moisture...good to go.

There had been some combines running to the north of us earlier in the day so Al was pretty confident that it would go. Marilyn let Al break in the combine by cutting the first hopper full...that way she could have the manual ready at a moments notice if an alarm went off that we didn't recognize.

Once we got the feel of the header...one disappointment is the way it works in short straw...not much different than the old 1010 header, it just lays on the knife until there is a big enough wad to take it through. But where the crop is tall it works like a dream. The combine seems to have some power issues, Al is convinced the 2588 had more power...this one seems to bog down at different times, none of them consistent...sometimes it's thin, sometimes short or heavy. It almost seems more of a fuel filter issue, sometimes it is all we can do to get it up to 3mph...there will be a call going in to ProHarvest tomorrow.

Even with the power issue, once we got it set right it didn't miss a beat and after a few rounds Marilyn was quite comfortable with the header. Comfortable enough to get 70 acres combined even though we never started until 4pm. Once everything is running up to snuff we should really make time.

But now it's time for sleep...