September 16, 2011

View of the day-Looks are deceiving...a steep hillside makes for cab cleanup after everything slides across the floor.

We were up really early today...early for us, at least. Marilyn had a conference call at 8am and Al wanted to get started gutting the breakdown from yesterday. Once he got all the chaff blown away and bolted off the important parts, he discovered the problem...the locking collar had come off the shaft. So that meant when the return started to get overloaded and fill up the elevator, it pushed the housing out and out popped the shaft.

Al took the auger out and thankfully it wasn't broken or bent, but on the opposite side of the combine, the plate that supports the auger had a couple of cracks. We took everything over to the welding shop a few miles from the farm and got it welded right away and he even had the bearing we needed. We got back to the combine, got everything put back together and tested, then Marilyn drove it out to the field, while Al followed in the pickup. Al tested it out in the canola and it worked like a dream...and we were starting just after 12:30pm...pretty good considering what it looked like last night.

While Al combined, Marilyn drove up to the field where the other combine was cutting wheat, to get the hand held radio to keep in contact with the rest of the "A Team", as we have dubbed ourselves. After grabbing the radio and giving Phil a ride over to the General...he was the grain hauler running the two tandems for Lindsey in the combine...she gave Phil some sticky traps to lay a trap line in Big Gen, because Al's roll of paper towel was slowly disappearing.

After stopping in town for groceries and fuel for the combine, Marilyn went back to the camper to make lunch, then went back out to the combine to ride around with Al for a while. Once he got the call to go haul grain with Phil, she took over picking up the canola with Barry, Howie and Blaine. We finished the field we were on, between showers...thankfully it was never running off the header...then we moved across the road to the next field of canola.

Marilyn started in and made it part of the way around the field and since the swaths were a bit tough because of the rain, she plugged the feeder house and when she went to reverse it...the chain on the reverser broke. After calling Al to come over with the pickup, she went out and took the shield off, then discovered a bearing was also gone on one of the sprockets. Of course, it was after business hours so...no parts tonight.

An early night at the camper...and the rain missed us...