September 11, 2013

View of the day-Al had a short haul to the bins from the canola field today.

Sun shining and wind blowing. A day full of promise. Kim went out and did a test just after lunch and it was 11.5% moisture, so the plan was to try it around 2pm.

We killed some time in the camper, then Al and Kim went on a road trip to check out the wheat fields up north of Carlyle. Marilyn went out and did the 2pm test...moisture still too high, but Kim figured we would just go and do a semi load at 3:30.

We were eager to try out the new seed savers, and both of them did what they were supposed to. The JD wasn't out with us, so we couldn't compare colors, and we were really dealing with two different styles of combines, so the "comparing" wasn't really applicable.

Kim's combine has a different feederhouse hookup and there is an inch gap where the header mounts. This allows some of the pods and seeds to get back onto the feederhouse with the backdraft created from the crop saver he has mounted on his header. We figured out a way to stop some of the weak spots on the shield...or at least we hope it will work.

Marilyn's shield worked as expected. With the rubber strips that seal it to the header, there were not a lot of seeds that reached the feederhouse. The dust did collect on the top, but it didn't seem to block the view of the auger too badly. The feederhouse plugged a couple of times, due to wet stems, but the shield didn't affect the unplugging, it actually seemed to help by moving the wads out to the sides of the header instead of up and onto the belts. The sun reflecting was a bit of an issue to start with, but once there was a layer of dust on it, it wasn't a problem.

We got the tandem filled a couple times, then filled the semi and by then, it was getting tough, so we quit for the night.

Looked like we were the only ones running...