Fixed The John Deere

The lighting problem on the swather turned out to be a switch problem. Pretty tight clearances in the overhead console and the switch had been rubbing on the ac evaporator fins causing the switch to lose internal connection. A little work with the vise grips had it tightened up again. Bent the top terminal down so it did not contact the evaporator anymore and should be good. Those wires would have worn through pretty soon causing more problems.

Now, do I use the swather to cut down the rest of the cereal grains or wait and hope the weather will ripen them enough to straight cut? Last year the straight header never came out of the shed and I swathed everything. Too much moisture and not enough heat.
Heavy rain today so I'm glad the wheat and oats are still standing.

The Continuing Harvest

Yes, harvest continues. It seems a long time ago since I started, almost a month. Statistics likely say that harvest is 99 percent complete in this province. As usual I am slightly out of step with the norm. Numerous breakdowns and unco-operative weather are what I blame it on. The few that are still harvesting have called in help and work with fleets of equipment that make my one man/one combine operation look small and inefficient. Well not just one man. I am at risk of offending my ever reliable truck driver who puts up with driving my 42 year old International truck to haul the grain.
I am actually on the last field and it is flax. Standing flax that could be direct cut if my International combine could actually put it through. That is impossible though and has been discussed at length in previous blog postings here. The John Deere pull type handles it well but having only a pickup header, I have to swath the flax before picking it up. Single 21 foot swaths of course. I have found out to my great displeasure that trying to put double swaths through the combine is more trouble than it is worth. After spending too many hours inside the combine with various saws and hooks laying on straw walkers as comfortable as a bed of nails, I came to that conclusion. My nephew finally brought his "sawzall" which eventually cut through the tightly wrapped straw in the beater.
The deer and possibly the moose have been making their trails through the flax. And the bush rabbits that run ahead of the swather are showing disturbing signs of turning white, a sign of winter approaching. As does the chill in the air when I step out of the cab. The flax seed flows almost like water as it pours out of the unloading auger of the combine into the truck box. Good and dry today. Tomorrow, who knows?
In the meantime, read a few interesting comments by the lazy farmer about why we blog.

A day or two ago in another flax field when the sun was shining, unlike today.