September 15, 2011

View of the day-Al had a short walk to work yesterday...from the camper to the semi. Not today, though.

Al was up early and got the combine serviced and fueled for Marilyn, so she could get started by 11am. Marilyn was pretty confident it would be another good day of combining canola...she found a penny on the way out the door and you know what that means...find a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck. So she did.

Al was hauling wheat off the fancy big Massey 9560 combine that was out for a demo. He didn't get a ride in it, but he did get a good look at it and was impressed by the engine setup...7 cylinder inline Sisu with 460hp. The motor is mounted longitudinal with the rads on an angle on the side of the engine...and they had a 42 ft flex draper head on the front. Marilyn is not ready for that, yet.

While Al was busy with the wheat, Marilyn was out picking up canola swaths with Howie and Barry in their combines and Blaine manning the grain cart. Halfway into the day her sample was looking a bit dirty and the return alarm kept going off, so she went out to inspect, but couldn't find anything amiss. She actually had the return elevator plug a couple of times and the last time it went off, there was no warning like she usually got.

When she went out to open the trap to run the slug out...nothing happened...and upon further inspection she could see the auger shaft had somehow backed out of the bearing and was jammed in the elevator. She was done combining for the day.

After driving back to the yard, she started dismantling things to find out if the auger was bent...she couldn't get to it for all the chaff that was jammed in the auger trough. She cleaned out as much as she could, reporting to Al on the radio everytime she found something new that was wrong, but he said to leave it until morning...which she decided was a good idea. Thanks to the frost the other night, she didn't have to deal with mosquitoes, at least.

While she waited for Al to come back from his hauling job, she got busy cleaning a big bag of assorted vegetables that Barry had dropped off at the camper. This is a great time of year to get all the veggies you need, because everyone has way to many to eat themselves...Marilyn never turns them down.

Now back to the lucky penny...don't think it worked...