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Roosty6 @B110

Thursday, February 13, 2014

25 Years Ago

One thing about this cold winter weather, it gives me an excuse to work on indoor stuff like this vhs video conversion to digital. Nice to look back on hot sunny weather. Although 1988 was a bit too much of a good thing. Spring started off fairly normal with good moisture for seeding but by the first week of June the heat was intense and unrelenting. I can't remember how much, if any, rain fell that summer but it could not have been much. The crops grew , but short and thin. If I had ever needed a direct cut header on the combine, that was the year. I did not have one though and it was my first year with the pull type Massey swather. A steep learning curve is how I would describe my first day with that swather in short barley. Once I got onto the depth judging and into a higher gear I was able to make good time and a reasonable swath. The swath being picked up in this video was spring wheat. I don't think I had ever run a combine that fast but there was so little material to put through that it required higher speed to keep the cylinder full and working. 
The sound of the GM 350 at 2400 rpm all day long through unrestricted straight piped exhaust was very satisfying.The old air conditioning system worked well . The harvested wheat was very dry and good quality, just not a lot of it. And that same old IH Loadstar still trucks the grain. Now on it's fourth combine. 
In other news, after watching this Gopro video I won't worry too much if mine falls off the machinery when I am shooting video.

3 comments:

  1. It's always interesting to look back.

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  2. It was not that long ago.
    It was about that time (3-5 years lager?)that My brother and I bought a Minneapolis-Moline G1000 VIsta that allegedly belonged to one of the Fogerty brothers of CCR fame.
    The first year of my 60 acre farm I lost $10,000.
    If I would have put that $10,000 plus the $3,500 we spent on the tractor as a down payment on a house, I'd have something right now...
    Nice video.

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  3. Budde, I see a link here. You bought a tractor that belonged to a CCR member. A couple of years earlier I used one of CCR's tunes, Bad Moon Rising, as sound track on another harvest video. Taped appropriately in the evening when the moon was rising over the 510 Massey. I could put it on youtube but I know they would block the music due to copyright.

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