Wheat harvest 2009

[mnjosh]

We finally started wheat harvest this week. This has been the latest start that I can remember in the last 10 years. The month of August has not been very cooperative for wheat drying down. Harvest was alreay two week later in starting due to late planting. Since I am on the truck, I have plenty of time on my hands to take lots of pictures. We started on Tuesday and had pretty good days on Wednesday and Thursday. It rained enough on Friday to keep us shut down. We've had some breakdowns on all three days. The most annoying one is on Wednesday on the last hopper of the day we blew up the chopper drive belt. When the belt blew up it caused another $400 worth of parts needed to be picked up. Enough talk, here are the pictures.

This field was half done on Tuesday; this is from the start of Wednesday.









I had to take a picture of the calves all nice and comfy in the shade trees.


Dumping the truck. The TW-10 is on the auger.




Second field of the day. This is kinda a fun little 6 acre field we farm next to a lake. To work the headlands all you have to do is start in one corner and just drive around the field.








Here we are starting the third field of the day. About a half hour after I took this picture the belt broke. We are dropping the straw in this field.



My mid afternoon on Thursday we were up and running again.






I have a couple of videos to post later. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

[wingerfish]

Thanks for the pixs! How is it running and what moisture? We haven’t started up here yet. Going to check fields later today. It’s very slow coming with this cool weather. 38.8 at 6:30 Am today. Some neighbors have started on the fields that were sprayed. The one neighbor had his field sprayed for 16 days and it was still tough and 15%+ moisture. Had rain Friday and Saturday. Looks like we might not make it to Big Iron being we might still be combining wheat.

[mnjosh]

The wheat is doing very good. Moisture was less that 16%, the protein it 14% plus, estimating yield is about 50-55 bu/ac. There isn't much wheat in our area; pretty much everyone started this past week. The field that we are dropping the straw was sprayed with Roundup about 10 days ago and was still tough cutting. The straw just hasn't dried well. We still have about 3 days of combining left.

[70ds]

Nice pics. I have heard about L2s breaking chopper belts before and it tearing a bunch of other stuff up. My uncle had a brand new L2 in 1979 with about 4 hours on it when the chopper belt broke and tore a bunch of stuff off the side of the combine. The Gleaner dealer said he couldn't be there for a couple days, so he canceled the check he just wrote for the L2 and went to Deere and bought the 7720 that he is still running. He called the Gleaner dealer told him to come get it he stopped payment on the check. The guy was pi$$ed but there wasn't much he was going to do about it.

[Tomas D.]

We are starting to swath some of our crops here probably goin to start combining around wednesday or thursday. Too bad school starts this week

[mnjosh]

Aug 30, 2009 11:11:08 GMT -5 70ds said:

Nice pics. I have heard about L2s breaking chopper belts before and it tearing a bunch of other stuff up. My uncle had a brand new L2 in 1979 with about 4 hours on it when the chopper belt broke and tore a bunch of stuff off the side of the combine. The Gleaner dealer said he couldn't be there for a couple days, so he canceled the check he just wrote for the L2 and went to Deere and bought the 7720 that he is still running. He called the Gleaner dealer told him to come get it he stopped payment on the check. The guy was pi$$ed but there wasn't much he was going to do about it.

Oh yeah, it tore off a bunch of stuff. This belt comes off the threshing clutch, tore off the wires on it, ripped the end off the torque sensing unit, ripped the wire on the return auger sensor, bent a idler pulley, ripped 3 wires of the hydralic solinoids, and also broke off 2 tabs that the wires connect to. Of all the parts that we had to replace, the belt was the cheapest thing at $30. We didn't even have the chopper on when this happened; you put the belt on a idler pulley above the chopper drive so there wasn't hardly any load on it.

[jacoblarson]

We got done last weekend. Ended up drying our wheat. First time in YEARS. Refused to go below 17%. Got to late, so brad decided to combine it. No pictures though. I was gone canoeing.