June 15, 2013

View of the day-A couple of buzzards waiting for breakfast…or perhaps, digesting breakfast.

Up early to get the truck unloaded, this time Marilyn had to drive Al over to the General in town before going back to the camper to get lunches ready.  It was cloudy and it looked like there might be a chance of rain…at least it was a LOT cooler than what we had been experiencing.

Al got the load in to Alva, then went back to the field to get the cart emptied and moved over to the next farmer’s canola.  Marilyn got out to the next field, picked Al up and went back to get the combine, then made one last trip over to get the General…good thing the field was only a mile away.  We did a quick test and took the sample in to Cherokee…7.5% moisture…good to go.  On the way back to the field, it was raining, but by the time we got to the combine it had quit and we could see clear skies to the west.  And you know the rule…”don’t quit combining until the water is running off the header”. Al took the last load over to Alva while Marilyn started in on the canola.

This field wasn’t as flat as the last one, there were a couple of waterways that cut through it, but it was only 80 acres, so it was “shut up and drive” once again.  The swatherman had left a few “beaver houses”…piles of canola…and had only made two rounds around the waterways where it was fairly steep.  This made it rather tricky to get the big combine turned around on those slopes without stomping on the swaths…took her back to combining in Esterhazy.  At least here, she didn’t have to worry about the combine auger possibly hitting the bushes when she turned.

We got that field finished and moved across the road to the last quarter of canola.  Marilyn was making the first round and for some reason the return plugged, so Al came over to check things out.  He discovered one of the belts that had been replaced during the winter warranty check and stretched and needed to be tightened.  Once that was fixed and the sieves tweaked, Marilyn was off and running again.

This field seemed to be running a lot better and Marilyn had to slow down quite a bit…partly due to the heavier swath and partly due to travelling “against the grain” of the seed rows.

There were ridges running down the east-west rows from the no-till air drill that the canola was planted with and because of the prevailing southerly winds, it was swathed north-south...the poor swatherman.  At one point Al thought we were dealing with 30ft swaths instead of the 25ft swaths of the last three fields…that would explain the heavier swath.  After calling to find out for sure…it was confirmed.  Now Marilyn’s mapping was all out of whack because she had 25ft put in for header width, which would make the yield and area calculations out.

We combined until the General was full, then quit around 10:30pm.  We had missed all the weather, but could see heavy lightning to the north in Kansas…we got lucky, this time.

The combine showed 125 acres for the day, but remember, the calculations were out, so it would have been more than that…