What's happeneing lately on the farm (updated)

[putsie]

Not a lot going on latetly actually (that's picture worthy anyways). Been doing a lot of yard work and tht kinda stuff but have lately started to get to the pre-harvest servicing and set up done. Here's a few pics from the last week or so.

The Canola's looking real good and is starting to turn quick in the heat so I figured I'd better pull out the swather and check it over. We got it mid-way through harvest last year (after the canola was swathed with a pt ). It's a 08 model and had been owned by a custom swathing setup, so it's got 19000+ acres and 900hrs of experience but thats fine by me. I doubt it'll get more than 50-70 hrs around here most years.



You know it's time for a bigger shop when even the new swather's are too big to fit through the door (that's the mechanic in me speaking out)


Header on and ready for action...



Combine all lonely in the quonset, all by itself now.


Brought the sprayer up next for service. Usually about this time we'd also throw on the skinny tires for desicating lentils but with the wacky weather we've been having I think we'll just leave the big'ns on and live with the tracks. The lentils actually bounce back pretty good anyways so there won't be many lost.



All ready for the Reglone...


The water/chemical truck, (08 Dodge Powerwagon if anyone's wondering)


My how grain trucks have evolved




Some of you guys were asking about getting the jet ski out on the slough? Here's a sampling of the piles of pics we took.




Emailed this picture to the neighbor, thanking him for spending the day with us ;D ;D. He was cutting alfala in the background. Good thing he's got a good sense of humor.



We took 4 days to enjoy the opportunity, invited a bunch of family over and made a big bash out of it. An uncle brought his boat out from Alberta to take it in.


the boat launch...







Hope you enoy.

[treymo]

Haha.. That is awesome. Very Nice Equipment. What kind of swather is that? It looks like a Macdon but has weird decals on er'. Great Pics
Trey

[magnum 7240]

i think it is a mac don in disguise and i hope the grass wasn't slippery so you didn't go the wrong way

[putsie]

Jul 27, 2011 8:34:33 GMT -5 treymo said:

Haha.. That is awesome. Very Nice Equipment. What kind of swather is that? It looks like a Macdon but has weird decals on er'. Great Pics
Trey

That's because it is a MacDon with weird decals on it ;D. Up you can get them decaled as Westward, MacDon, or Premier. Same model numbers, same everything different names. I don't know why they do that though, especially since they don't re-decal the headers to match the tractor (execpt the CIH ones).

[steiger9330]

Nice pics. It looks like your shop is like ours, work on stuff outside lol. It's an incentive for us to not break anything though.

[putsie]

That shop was converted from a machine shed that was built in the early 60's. The tractors, trucks and even the combines (Massey Super 92 and later a pt JD 96) all fit in there back in the day.

[johndeere9430]

Nice swather. We are considering a macdon m205. How do you guys like the m150 ?

[putsie]

No complaints here. We've only put 50hrs in it to this point and I can say without a doubt I sure am glad we jumped on it when it was available. There's lots of M100's out there for sale right now and my opinion is that the 100 is too small (HP and capacity) for anything more than a mower/conditioner (hay) head or 25ft draper (our D-60 is a 35ft). The M200 would be nice I'm sure. They have a Cat in them I think vs the Cummins in the M150. M200 would have a little more power,I don't know how much more different then that they are.

My one comment is that Auto-steer is a must for them. We were swathing 7-8mph last year in 50bpa durum and I couldn't have done it without. Nice to be able to turn around and watch the swath while playing with variable canvas speeds and all that fun stuff, trying to make the perfect swath.

[jd3020]

what size booms on the 4710?
we switched to skiny tires a couple weeks ago

[ManitobanFarmerKid]

I remember when we upgraded swathers, except that was 8 or 9 years ago, and we went from a Versatile 500 to a Preimer (Macdon) 2930 Turbo with 960 head. The thing has given us no problems and works great, even without auto-steer.

[putsie]

The 4710 has 90' booms, with Raven auto height control.

If you like the 960 MD header, you'd love the D-series. To be honest, after running the D-60 and FD70 (combine) I've forgotten all about the 972 we used to run which we thought were a big improvement over the 960.

[steelin81]

That's a nice swather, you guys should be finnished swathing just before we are ready to start. Just wedge a stick onto the hydro lever and point it northwest and I'd be happy to run it a couple of days. I'm not to sure how my old 852 Massey would like a 35' swath but it would be worth a try.
Remember when you get your new shop no matter how big you build it, it will always be 10' to narrow and 20' too short.

[putsie]

Jul 29, 2011 2:05:37 GMT -5 steelin81 said:

Just wedge a stick onto the hydro lever and point it northwest and I'd be happy to run it a couple of days. I'm not to sure how my old 852 Massey would like a 35' swath but it would be worth a try.

hahaha..... sounds good. Might need someone to intercept and navigate across Sask Landing though.

If your Massey picks up a 35ft swath with too much ease.... I think I'd be disappionted with the crop. I can remember as a kid in the 80's my dad and uncle "double swathing" a 36 ft swath then picking it up with a Deere 106 and 6601. Those crops were taken out by drought and grasshoppers.

[mstjhamfarms]

Awesome photos! Very good shots!
Yep I see you all got as much rain as we did.

Enjoy your summer...Hambone

[steelin81]

Getting it across the big lake shouldn't be a problem, I know a guy from north of Chaplin who lives about ten miles from the Riverhurst ferry.
It's funny you mention the double swathing. Dad rigged up a 24' pt swather which would drop onto an 18' swath. I remember riding with grandpa on an open 900 Case beside the seat on a steel pail, not too much for comfort back then. I would have been six or seven which would have been 1987 or 88. We cut for ourselves, Grandpa and Dad's two brothers with that set up. We ran 42' through our JD 96 and my uncles 6601's.

[putsie]

Steelin, it looks as though you and I were cut from simular molds. Our double swathing setup back in the 80's were a 20ft Deere 290 swather and a 16ft 190 double swather. We normally pulled em with a pair of Massey 's (my uncles 1105 and dads 1135) but on occasion gramdpas John Deere 830 got a shot on the lead swather. I had a little old foot stool to sit on though instead of a steel pail... little more space in those MF cabs lol... Got some pics of it all some where I'll have to go dig up sometime.

Here's a few more pics from the past week. First set is from working up a couple old fence lines that we want to get rid of, so we can farm the land on either side as one big field. We had a earthmover come in a couple years back to pull the tops off to get rid of most of the ridge. We just haven't had much time to get back to it. The cultivator used is a old CCIL with the wings removed and ripping spikes put on. Like any old fence line around here there's now a pile of rocks to pick because that where they always got thrown was at the fenceline.





Got back to the yard and found that the new auger for harvest had arrived. It's a Sakundiak, 12"x about 84ft. It's claimed that it'll keep up to a 13" but that don't make sense to me. I just cared that it was a Sakundiak and not something else. Quality augers.....



Also went mowing isolation strips around the registered durum fields. These fields will all be inspected now and labeled as ceritified seed.


This years lentil crops around here look bad this year. With all th rain we had early on the spray didn't really work and the fields are both flooded and weedy, this is cutting next to a neighbors lentil crop.


Cutting along the neighbors durum. These are actually different varieties...... can't you tell


Different variety again, easier to tell this time....


not all the crops are at the same stage. The neighbors crop here is gonna be a while yet.