Baling straw, fixing combines, etc.

I might just be the last guy combining in this area. Tried my flax swaths this afternoon and although they went through the combine just fine, the grain tests a bit on the high side for safe storage.
The John Deere combine narrowly escaped a major breakdown. While getting it ready to try the flax I found that the sieves had shaken shut from excess vibration. Red light signal right there. Sure enough a rubber bushing on the shaker arm had worn flat and would have shaken all the sieves to pieces in a short time. 25 year old rubber so I guess it owes me nothing. Several trips for a bit of welding and some parts and eventually it was ready to go.
These combine sieves are huge compared to the little old combines we used to run. While waiting for my help to come and assist re-installing the sieve, I took the opportunity to bale some oat straw with the square baler. Dry, broken up straw that resembled chaff was not a problem for the old Massey and it produced some good solid square and heavy bales.
Had an extra chore to take care of involving wildlife. The racoon trap contained a skunk yesterday morning. I didn't want to get sprayed by the skunk and didn't really want to kill it either as they are a beneficial animal around the farm. With a little patience and care I was able to get the trap open without overly scaring the skunk and it made it's escape. Hopefully having learned a lesson (Stay out of racoon traps!)
The unusually warm and dry weather continues. Will it last long enough for me to finish the flax? Should I trust the weather forecast and  wait for the grain to dry a little more or just take a chance and combine it a little high moisture?

Harvest 2011 in the bin

Its done, the 2011 crop is in the bin. Except for the bushels I spilled on the ground and wasted through various accidents and my own stupidity. I sometimes think I wasted more grain then my grandfathers grew on this farm.
The final day was a bit of a stress test with a minor breakdown on the combine that involved no expense other than running miles back and forth down rough and dusty gravel roads with the grain truck to weld a hitch extension. Threatening unsettled weather put me a bit on edge too. I really wanted to get finished and get the machinery home under cover before rain hit. Hopes of that happening sunk quickly as the tractor sunk into the mud in mid afternoon. They say a short cut is not always a short cut and its true.
I had cut through this "dry" creek with the swather a few days earlier while cutting the flax. Figured the combine and tractor would make it through with an empty hopper. Not true. The combine started to sink pulling the tractor sideways. Without the rear dual wheels on the tractor, forward motion suddenly changed to downward movement and I quit before things got really mired. Thank goodness for cell phones and my nephew being home to bring a tractor to help. Even with the big new 50 foot nylon tow rope it was all the smaller tractor could handle to get the big guy out of the mud.
That pushed my finish time well into the late night hours. The weather gave me a break as the wind stayed up keeping the flax dry enough to go through the combine without plugging. That John Deere pull type has an insatiable appetite for grain swaths and I sure appreciated it. No regrets there.
The double swath feature on the swather is a mixed blessing. Two swaths laid together to make 40 feet per pass is a real time saver when it works. It takes perfect driving of the combine though to get it into the combine pickup. A few inches too far either way and swath starts pushing ahead  of the outside edge of the pickup creating a "snowball effect" in which flax is pushed and rolled up into an ever increasing pile . When that finally enters the header it is a real shock to the feeder system. I heard a few complaints from the slip clutches but it powered the slug through every time.
I did get out a few times to push swath into the header by hand in the tractor lights. All the time thinking about all the horror stories of farmers caught in combine augers and being permanently injured or worse.
The crop results were mixed. Wheat pretty good but downgraded due to ergot. Canola was great on one field, disaster on another due to combined effects of a missed herbicide application and then hail on the swath.
Oats pretty good, way better than last year.
Flax looked great all season but did not yield well.
Now to tackle the endless list of things needing to be done before winter. I know I won't finish it but will try to figure out the top priority items and get them done.