View of the day-We are back in the zone, cutting spring wheat in Pingree, ND.
We walked over to the Pingree Cafe...50 yards from the camper, through some mighty wet grass...and got our egg fix in. After breakfast, we loaded up the lunch bags and headed out to the field to get the combine ready for action.
Marilyn did the windows and got her camera mounted in the hopper so she could keep track of the wheat as it piled up...actually, she would likely not see a full hopper for a while...more later. Marilyn was having issues with the steering column...the same issue that Casey had with his JD combine...it tilted fine, but it would not lock into place. We discovered what the issue was and got it fixed as best we could, then got the header hooked up and ready for action, then we moved across the road to cut a patch for the trucks.
This field we are working on is one of those fields, that when you drive by, you think how scenic it is...rolling hills and thick wheat...beautiful. BUT when you actually have to go in and cut it...well,that is a whole other story. The hills help to keep the water drained...and they had a lot of it this year...but there were places where the water eventually had to end up and Marilyn started out avoiding these spots at all costs. It was easy enough to cut through the high part of the field, but it didn't take long before the "window kissing" hills gave way to the valleys and their hidden traps.
Al was running the grain cart and made a point of dumping the combine on every other pass, just to keep the weight off the combine...hence the mention about not getting to use the hopper camera. While he was up dumping the cart into the semi...Marilyn planted it. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as the Esterhazy catastrophe from last fall and Danny was able to pull her out with the 4 wheel drive tractor and a healthy tow strap.
Then the steering column gave way again, but this time Marilyn decided to keep on combining and just deal with the excitement of a wayward steering column with a mind of its own...we could deal with it when we quit for the day.
At least the combine could still do the important job, even though the tracks looked like Marilyn might have had a few beverages, or the wrong glasses on.
Justin was having issues with his 2388 CaseIH combine...or rather his draper head, the combine was working fine. Since his combine was lighter that Marilyn's, he was going to try and open up the field, or at the very least, patch out some pieces that Marilyn could clean up, but he would just get going and the feed draper would stop and he would have to get out and do some fixing. Eventually he had to go for parts, so Marilyn was on her own.
The weather was unpredictable...clouds built up, then
dumped rain and moved on, but we were fortunate to only get a sprinkle to slow us down for a bit. Three miles south a half an inch fell...nice that most of the showers split and went around us.
When we finally quit combining, just as the sun was going down, we gave Ray from ProHarvest a call to find out what the issue with the steering column could be and he walked us through what he thought it might be. We had looked online at the parts catalogue and described to him which part we thought was wrecked, but when we had it off, we could see that the threads weren't stripped as we originally suspected. It turned out to be a lock nut that was hidden behind a rubber boot that wasn't doing it's job...we clued that bugger in and got everything almost back together. We had to stop because the mosquitoes were almost carrying us off. And that is pretty serious when you consider the size of us.
Still a pretty good day of combining...
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