Bad Luck or No Luck At All

Thats an old expression that comes to mind lately. Although I should not complain too much as I have a lot of help to try and keep the wheels turning. Two combines here on the farm, either one of which should be able to handle the 700 odd acres of crop without a problem. And yet here I sit with both broke down and the last 40 acres of canola swaths still in the field. Cloud and showers in the forecast for today so it will be just a matter of covering things up to protect them from the rain and then try to fix the problems when weather permits. The canola swaths have been a nightmare to put through either combine. The self propelled IH did pretty well but suffered from the abuse of these big canola lumps hitting the feeder and finally something has #@*ed up inside the feeder house causing me to park it. Too dark the investigate much so the John Deere pull type was put into duty after some hydraulic hose replacement to at least cut oil consumption by half. It worked pretty well in spite of numerous feeder house plug ups that are very time consuming and strenuous to unplug. Luckily I have my nephew available most of the time to help out. Due to John Deere's ridiculous belt drive system for the feeder chain it is impossible to turn it backwards by hand because the belt just slips. One man needs to turn the lever while the other holds pressure on the belt so things turn. Otherwise its hand work with hooks and saw to remove a handful of straw at a time. My grandfather Nevard would be shocked to see me using his mitre saw to cut canola stalks out of the combine feeder area but thats what I'm doing. The John Deere gave out on a beautiful harvest day suffering a breakdown of a bolt in the shoe area. Its fixable but going to take time. The showers forecast will give plenty of time to work on it. Of course it is located on the second farthest away field so repairs involve plenty of driving back and forth for tools, parts, etc. There can't be much good weather left at this time of year. Will I finish before winter sets in? Will the grain be dry?

Fall Winter

Its supposed to be fall but feels more like winter today. Temp struggling to hit 40 with fine rain and raging NW wind. I went to work on a few things on the combine but soon lost my enthusiasm in those conditions. It has been parked for six days waiting on some decent weather. I'm down to my last field but it is the worst one. Good as far as crop yield but a bit of a nightmare to get through the combine. I did my best trying to swath the nearly six foot tall canola but still left intermittent lumps of swath where it plugged going through the swath opening. Some of these piles are so big and knitted together that I just lift the combine header over them and drive on. Not worth the frustration and exertion of unplugging the feeder chain yet again. Not to mention the time lost. The stress on the combine and operator is high. Next year better be a shorter variety of canola that my swather can handle. I'm even seriously considering putting the sidelined IH 1660 in the field hoping it might handle the lumpy swath better. Just need to rig up an oil leak catcher at the gear box and keep on adding oil to replace what leaks out. Supposed to be a nice weekend and then a few days of good weather. Will it be enough for me to finish? I wouldn't bet on it. The last day it took me 5 hours to do a 12 acre patch of canola swaths. At that rate I'll need a week of good weather to finish. Signs of snow falling this evening. Its cold enough. Sask Energy will be happy as my furnace is running.