Early South-west Sask Harvest (50+ pictures)

[miniskfarm]

Chris I guess that makes you South Central

So I got out of my day job in the office for almost two weeks to get down and help out with harvest on my uncle & Cousins farm. They farm 4,000acres south of Swift Current growing red and green lentils, mustard, winter wheat and durum.

They upgraded their harvesting equipment slightly this year. Going in they had a new (07) NH Swather w/ 30' HB, 05 2388 (chipped up = to a 2588) with pickup, 30' CIH Flex and 36' HB and a IH Tandem.

My first day was spent between the trucks, combine and a little bit of swather time.
The second day I started out swathing green lentils in the mud. NEVER EVER DO THIS! Lentils in the mud is a horrible idea!



I fought with it for 1.5days, cutting less than 100 acres we gave up and Gary sprayed the rest with Reglone.

So I crawled home, those stupid swathers only do 10mph in road gear... it was a 15mile run home.



Once I got home I ran more chemical out to the sprayer since we were now spraying more land than originally planned. Across the road is my cousins amazing durum crop.



160full acres of that!



Sprayer



I got home and fueled up and washed the swather (from the fun in the mud)




We kept breaking bolts on the knife drive. Can anyone see the problem?



The next day I was back on the trucks









Then the combine



Then swathing mustard for a couple days (3 quarters had to come down)







BIG mustard. I am 6' tall and standing up it came to my shoulder







I called this field the rock infested sand pile... It was a rough couple days!



Some were asking the point of a swath roller. It took it from waist high to knee high.



one field done!





I missed most of the rain, but it hit the field they were harvesting lentils on.



I layed down some Crested Wheat Grass that will be harvested for seed.







I could see one of the mustard fields from my bedroom.



Pretty straight for someone who doesn't do this full time if I do say so myself!



The day before I had missed the coversation about how little had been harvested the day before and at that rate they would have ~2weeks of just lentils to do plus everything else.
Sooooooo This showed up the next day.
#2 - 2388 (98 model)



We had to pull wrenches on it for a day but once we got both machines running... you can cover a lot of acres with two machines picking up 60' swaths, 120' per pass harvesting @ 3mph is impressive!





Waiting in line for the last truck of the night



First time both combines sat together for a night



The next day I pulled into a new 160acre field at 9am, the second combine showed up at 10



We were stopped for ~30min waiting for trucks late in the afternoon but otherwise we never stopped rolling





The neighbors lentils next door are still grass green


at 4:30 we were picking up the last swath!


7.5 hours for a quarter section was the fastest quarter ever harvested on this farm.



We ran into some really wet lentils so we moved home.
I hooked up the 36' HB and moved onto 60bushel wheat.



I needed a truck every 30min so even Rusty got called into service, with only one driver even with the 2 mile haul the tandem and 400bushel Orange couldn't keep up.











Afer fighting with the flex header with the other combine for two days and cutting off $2000 worth of fingers off the reel I got called in to try the HB header.



Worked like a DREAM! in 4 hours I cut the same area they had in the last two days.



My last morning there, time to say goodbye.





Coming home I saw a train hauling rail, something I had never seen before...



I have a couple movies I am uploading also... Stay tuned.

[magnum 7240]

cool very cool to see what you guys can do in canada with all that land and what you can grow up there

[70ds]

Nice pics. Looks like a great way to spend a vacation. I love to take time off from work to spend time at the farm.

[miniskfarm]

Lentils:


Wheat



Swathing mustard



I have no idea why this is the only movie that will not flip. I didn't know my phone would do this. Live and learn

[jd3020]

how did you like the nh swather?

we are going to try wheat tommorow, i gues were not the only ones with tall canola ours is hiting the bottom of our 4730 john deere sprayer and ripping of hoses

[miniskfarm]

Aug 24, 2011 22:52:45 GMT -5 jd3020 said:

how did you like the nh swather?

we are going to try wheat tommorow, i gues were not the only ones with tall canola ours is hiting the bottom of our 4730 john deere sprayer and ripping of hoses

It was a bit of a love hate with the swather.

Nice cab, great controls with the exception of the height controls (you still had good steering at low RPM and speeds, very maneuverable - it was really easy to plant one tire and pivot, everything was well set out), good visibility.

The hydraulic float is terrible, we could never get it set up properly, one side was always digging. The controls for header height and reel height were backwards on the NH compared to the CNH combine. It made it hard to go between the two machines.

[putsie]

Aug 24, 2011 23:11:36 GMT -5 miniskfarm said:

[ The controls for header height and reel height were backwards on the NH compared to the CNH combine. It made it hard to go between the two machines.

That's the same as the MacDons. Ridiculously annoying. I had to think about what I was doing at every corner to keep from digging in instead of lifting.

[miniskfarm]

the problem is it is the exact same control leaver between the NH and CIH just set up backwards!

I only grounded the combine header a couple times, oddly after I had been running it for a couple days after parking the swather, got tired and hit it not thinking which machine I was in. Fortunatly there was no rocks around, there was a couple in the wheat feild that would have busted stuff up pretty good!

[ManitobanFarmerKid]

That looks great! Where about in SW Sask are you? I have a cousin who works on a farm just North of Pambrun.

[miniskfarm]

I am in Saskatoon but the farm is in the Ponteix area. Just take the super grid straight south of Panbrum, it a 1-2 beer trip.

Pambrum is a good town for a single (?) guy to be at with that bridal, I mean Bible School there.

[ManitobanFarmerKid]

Yeah, my uncle (his dad) runs the bible school.