July 17, 2011

View of the day-A lovely sunset at Hamill.

We woke up to an overcast day and the threat of rain...threat was all it was, as everything stayed to the west of us and eventually cleared off. It was also another oppressively hot day with temperatures reaching 104º...and that miserable humidity was at it again.

We went out to the field and the semi had shown up, so Al dumped the cart and Marilyn started combining. There was only 35 acres left to do and once we had the semi full and waiting for the driver to come back, Al loaded the General. He decided to try calling the elevator and was pleasantly surprised to hear they would be open until 6pm, so he took the load on the General to town.

Marilyn got the field finished, then roaded the combine around the scenic route to the next field...1/2 mile as the crow flies, 10 miles so the header would fit down the road. After stopping at the lot where the trailers were, she got the header unhooked and put into transport, then waited for Al to come back with the General so she could hitch a ride back out to the field to bring the pickup truck back. Al dumped the cart into the General, then roaded the tractor back to town, then hooked the header up to the pickup and got moved to the field.

Once we got out to the field, Marilyn cut a test and this wheat was even drier than the last field...10.2% moisture! She opened up the field while Al got a ride back to the General with Roger, then Al got her to call the elevator to see if they would wait for him to bring in the last load of the day. Once the combine was full, Marilyn drove into town and brought the tractor and cart out to the field so she could start making a load for the semi to take in, in the morning.

After dumping the combine and starting a second round, she got into some thick wheat with some green weeds and wiry stalks which jammed the cutting knife. She went out and pulled all the straw, then went back into the cab and tried reversing it...success! Then as soon as she cranked it up to start cutting again, there was some serious banging and jumping of the PTO shaft, so she shut everything down and went out to inspect.

Once she got a good look at the feeder auger, she could see the disappearing fingers that pull the grain into the feederhouse had popped back into their guide holes and jammed into the inside of the auger tube. She got the tool box out and removed all the inspection covers to see if she could do anything with what she had...that one bugger was jammed so bad, it had raised quite a blemish on the outside of the auger...she would not get that loose anytime soon.

Al got back to town, then came out with the pickup to lend a hand and decided it would work best if we could take the header off so we could work on the auger from both sides. We managed to get most of the bent fingers out, but the one that was jammed was going to be more of a challenge. The temperature was still at 104º at 7:30pm and we were just wringing wet from the humidity, so we did as much as we could, then called it a day to get out of the heat.

Back at the camper, we checked online for the parts we might need...and where we might find them in this neck of the woods, and found that Winner has a MacDon dealer, so hopefully we will find them there.

We will have to get at it early to keep cool...105º forecast for tomorrow, and you know the humidity will still be around...