June 4, 2010

View of the day-Al roads the tractor and cart across the Oklahoma/Texas line.

Today was moving day for us...we were heading across the Red River into Texas to start combining there. We got out to the field and unhooked the header from the combine then Al drove the tractor and cart while Marilyn moved the combine over to the new field.

Along the way we encountered a lot of crews servicing, moving and combining...it really is in full swing and with the temperatures forecast to be 105-107º for the weekend, there will be a lot more crop coming off. We did meet a crew moving north already, but most of them were in the fields making dust.

We got to the field then the farmer picked us up so we could go back and get the pickup, header and General. We got them out to the field and it was decided that because the farmer had his wheat contracted in Altus...an 80 mile drive one way...he would have two of his semis haul the grain until the contract was filled. This meant Al could run the cart and Marilyn wouldn't have to stop to dump.

One thing Al has always thought these combines needed was a way to go around a field and have the monitor tell you how many acres were in the perimeter...the desktop software does it, so why couldn't the combine? Marilyn was personalizing the user screens and discovered that these machines now have the ability to do this very thing. It is almost like the GPS in the vehicles that tell you how many miles to your destination...this tells you how many acres in the boundary, how many acres you have left and an estimate on how much time it should take you to finish. Al is pretty happy now that there is a way to know how much is left, because when he asks Marilyn...she has no clue. It doesn't matter that she has combined tens of thousands of acres...she really can not visualize an acre. Not anymore.

On Al's first pickup from the combine, he discovered the fuel filter on the tractor was leaking, so he drove into Frederick to get a couple new ones and on the way back he picked up the shop trailer so we would have it handy at the field. While he was gone, Marilyn had no end of trouble with the return plugging from the cheat grass. The first time it stopped, she backed out of the swath to get out of the wind and when she went around the side of the combine, the back wheel was just sitting on the edge of one of the shields from the side of the combine...and no idea how the thing came off...or why. After propping it up against the fence so it would be easy to find with the pickup...there was no way it was fitting back on...she continued on. She had to stop three times due to plugging and even tightening the return chain and slowing down to a crawl didn't help. Once Al got back we did some minor adjustments and were rolling non-stop for the rest of the day. Well, except for the wait on a truck to dump in.

Considering we started a 4pm in the field, we still managed to get 93 acres covered and have a good start on a load for the semi in the morning.

But it's another late night...