It Ain't Over

...til its over. To quote the legendary baseball player, Yogi Berra . Although I think it might be over for me as far as harvest 2015 goes. Even though the sun shone well today it was not enough to melt the layer of snow we had last night. The next few days forecast to be warm and sunny will melt that snow and actually make the swaths wetter. Freeze drying overnight will help a little if we get enough days. It is unlikely there will be enough drying days though.
Here is some video of the harvest so far. Picking up wheat swath with the Case IH 1660 combine and flax swath with the John Deere 7721 on some of the few days when the weather and crop were both ready. Up til this year I could usually straight cut all the wheat and leave the flax stand til ready and then swath right ahead of the combine. This year the crops just did not ripen or dry off as normal. Climate change? Global cooling? Whatever, in hindsight I should have swathed everything at least a couple of weeks earlier than I did. The straight cut header never came out of the shed for the first time since I bought it.

Good news, bad news

The good news first. I got in 3 or more good days harvesting and finished the cereal grains.The bad news, I still have 130 or so acres flax swaths waiting to be harvested. And both combines incapacitated and an eighty percent chance of rain tomorrow. Yes, the flax tested dry (9.7 percent moisture) this afternoon. When I finished the oats I tried a sample of flax. The IH is a fantastic combine on cereals and canola but an absolute failure on flax. It wrapped up tight with flax straw on the beater within the first minute of picking up swath. That means a laborious session with hooks and hack saw blades to get it unplugged. At least I got enough flax in the hopper for a moisture test.  Headed for the five mile drive  home to park the flax wrapped IH and figured I'd head back with the JD pull type and at least get an hour of combining flax before dark. Already 4:30 with darkening skies and the wind dropped to nothing so I knew it would be a short run.
Far shorter than I expected though. The JD never even got out of the shed. Turned the key and the Magnum barely cranked the engine. Those 15 year old batteries finally failed. I'd been expecting that for the past year or so. That is about double the life most get out of a  set of tractor batteries and I guess they don't owe me anything. Luckily they held out for the weekend and I got one flax field done at least.
That John Deere 7721 pull type just eats up flax swaths but even it has a few spots I have to watch and check frequently for flax straw wrapping. I came very close to burning it down last harvest when flax wrapped so tight on a rotating shaft that it started to smoke and burnt the paint off the cylinder housing.

First flax field was not great yielding due to excess moisture and weed re-growth. The next two look much better . The last wheat field was excellent . Clean and heavy. Unfortunately bleached by weather and laying in the swath through rains. The moose crap in the sample is a little worrisome and will almost surely down grade it to feed status. Laying swaths in moose/deer country has it's drawbacks.
The wheat at 15.7 percent moisture was a point above dry but considering the forecast of rain there was no way I was going to wait any longer. Got in my best and longest harvest day of the season yesterday cleaning off a good 80 acres of wheat. Pushed the old IH pretty hard on those heavy wheat swaths but it never plugged or broke anything even working late into the night when the straw got so damp and wet that it would hardly feed off the pickup.
Really nice sunset yesterday and I took a picture of it through the window as I was combining Figured it would make a good one for the Sask Scenery facebook page but it turned out pretty unimpressive on the screen.

I even got a chance to vote in the federal election late today. I'd decided earlier in the day that no way was I going to waste at least an hour of harvesting time driving to town and back to vote. Figured I'd exercise my right not to vote.  But, seeing as I was shut down my mechanical problems late in the day I decided I needed my mail and groceries anyway so it made the trip to town worth while.
Oh well, if it does rain and I can't harvest for the next few days there is always this ......

Combining Oats with the IH 1660.

Harvest continues
I am too tired and it is too late to do a "real" blog post so here is a bit of video from today giving you the view from my "office window". Great weather, fair crop, beautiful scenery, really can't complain about much today.

Canola Harvest Sept 2011

Its late at the end of another long harvest day so I can't get too creative or verbose in this posting. I will let the video tell the story. In brief, we have had a week of well above normal temperatures which has given me a good start on harvest. I've harvested a field of canola which was better than expected. Started a field of wheat which is not as good as it appeared. At least the machinery is rolling along with no major complaints. The 40 year old truck and 22 year old combine continue to do the jobs they were designed for without complaint.
The beautiful harvest weather might just come to an end tonight. Clouds, high winds and lightning off in the distant sky are not looking too hopeful.

Finally Harvesting

At last we have had a week of sunny warm weather and I imagine all of Sask. is under a cloud of grain dust as combines thresh grain all day and into the night. No dust from the ground though as there is more mud and water than I have ever worked in before. Many reports of stuck combines and grain carts, broken chains and tow ropes. Even backhoes brought in to dig out combines.
My photo shows what can happen when combining at night and the driver (me) can't tell what he is driving into. I don't normally drive through water with a combine but was amazed to see in the revealing light of day that I had spun through mud and water in the dark. I'm constantly amazed just how much this combine will go through but expect I will find it's limits before harvest is through.
One major breakdown lost me a whole day yesterday when I discovered a cracked wheel rim on the combine. A 5 hour round trip to a combine wrecker and $1800 later I had a "good as new" wheel and tire to replace the cracked rim.
Grain quality looks not too terrible considering the rain its had on it but I hear there is nothing better than a #3 wheat out in the fields now.
I'm probably at about 30% finished . Could be another 3 weeks of work out there if the weather holds out and nothing else breaks.