August 19, 2016

View of the day-A gloomy start to the day as the "skittles"...colors of the rainbow...are lined up.

Could this possibly have been Friday the 13th?

Al stayed in Yorkton last night to get an early start on his errands. Marilyn was informed that the combining crew could possibly start as early as 8 am if there was enough wind and the humidity was low. They planned on starting as soon as it was even close...moisture really didn't matter, but the state of the straw would be the big concern.

Marilyn got up extra early...to thick, low clouds...and was packed and on the way to the field by 8:15 am. On the 30 mile drive over there were several pockets of misty rain, none of them heavy enough to use the wipers. By the time she got to the field and did a little bit of servicing, the misty spells were getting more frequent and heavier.

While she waited in the pickup killing time for a couple of hours, it rained on and off, but the wind was drying it off in between. She got the call that the rest of the crew would be coming out in about an hour to do a test...a mere formality...so she settled in. 

The guys showed up and we got started combining...it was slow going, but we actually made some pretty good time. Until a rain shower shut us down for a while. After waiting a bit, we moved across the road and started in on the next field.

While we were waiting, Al showed up from his road trip with lunch for us. The sun came out again and within an hour, we were back combining. Everything was going great, even through the misty rains that would not leave us alone. The last one was timed just right as the chow wagon showed up.

We don't usually like to stop to eat, but we also don't want to be anti-social, so we joined everyone...and it had rained. We went back to the combine after supper and were humming right along...until we got a large wad that plugged the rotor so bad, it stalled the combine.

This machine will rock the rotor to clear the slug, but man, it was jammed tight. After a good hour of working it back and forth, we finally cleared the slug. We ran it for a few minutes to clear everything out, then decided to run the header to put what was left on it through the machine.

Bad idea.

It plugged again, even tighter than before. We worked it with the reverser, but it would only move a short distance and it refused to go even a smidge further. We drove back to the pickup and decided to go "old school" and take out one of the concaves to start pulling straw. Barley straw, oh joy. It took us another 45 minutes, but we got it cleared and by then the sun had gone down and the green ones were parking for the night. The yellow one never did crank up after supper.

Tomorrow can only be better...