October 10, 2013

View of the day-The flax looks like it is almost ready...except for the green stems...could be trouble.

Al went out to get the trucks unloaded and the combine serviced, while Marilyn waited at the camper for further instructions. Then it started to sprinkle...then rain. This was not in the forecast.

After about half an hour it quit, but even though it was only a short shower, Marilyn was pretty sure there wouldn't be any combining for a while.

Al showed up just after noon with the news that Garth had jumped across to finish the last few acres that we had left before the rain came. We were done with the wheat and the only thing left to do was flax, but unless the sun came out and it dried up, it didn't seem like it would go today.

We got the combine moved back to the yard and did a bit of work on the General's tarp...it didn't seem to want to open evenly. Got that looked after, then went back to the camper to wait it out.

Bob wanted a test done on the some of the first flax he had planted, so we moved out to the 15 acre patch which was a mile from the yard. We took the spreaders off, since the straw is going to be baled...and flax straw does not spread worth a damn.

Marilyn started the first round and plugged the feeder within 10 ft of starting. Part of the reason was that the stems were still kind of green and some of the grass from the outside round had made it into the feeder as well...and it had rained this morning.

Al took over and cut enough for a sample, which we took to the elevator. It was 9% moisture and that was good, since dry is 10%. We went back to see if we could finish the patch, or at the very least, make a couple rounds.

Al got 1/3 of the way around and only had to stop three times to unplug the knife. All the green straw was jamming it solid, so we took a good look at it and decided that if we were going to do 400 acres of flax, we had better invest in new knife sections and guards.

We went to the John Deere dealer to see if they had what we needed, and they did. They had the MacDon brand for a mere $18/guard, or the jobber brand for $14/guard. We figured the jobber brand was good enough for us and we needed 65 of them, so it did add up. We also needed to change out the 140 sections that cut against the guards, so we picked them up as well.

We went back to the farm and started changing the guards and sections. We would take about 5 guard and 10 sections off at a time, replace them, then move down the header, repeating the process. We had already done about a third of the header, when we looked at the guards and discovered that they were the MacDon brand instead of the jobbers. Had he charged us for the jobbers...which we requested...and given us the MacDon ones by mistake?

After taking a look at the bill, we could see they had sold us the MacDon ones at the MacDon price. We certainly weren't going to take off the 25 we had already put on.

Well played, John Deere...well played...