Harvest #4

During harvest it is very important to keep all the equipment serviced.  You don't have time for breakdowns out there! Like I've said previously, once the combines are started, they're not shut down until they are done for the day.  Every morning while we're waiting for the wheat to dry out for the day, we service all the machinery and fill up with diesel.

You have to clean the header out real good before moving to a new field.  This is so you don't carry anything bad from one field to another.  As in bad, I mean things like Rye seeds or Oat seeds.  They can spread like wildfire and hurt the quality of your crop.

Anytime there is a combine shut down during the day, it's usually bad news.  It's usually because of a breakdown.  Breakdowns are never good.  Breakdowns are bad.  They're terrible!

Have I mentioned how terrible it is to have a breakdown?

Well, we had one this year.  It was on the last day of being done; which caused us to have to cut the next day to get finished.  We almost made it without any problems!

This is my Father-in-law, the keeper of the tools and supervisor!

This year, we had a jam inside the combine.  The wheat was a little too wet and it became clogged inside the thrasher.  Unfortunately the only way to unclog the combine when this happens is to dig it out by hand.  You have to crawl up inside and dig it out piece by piece until you can get it loose enough to turn the thrasher over.  This particular jam took about 12 hours to get unclogged.  I did not get any pictures of the inside of the combine.  I was too busy picking out the pieces.

After we got the thrasher thrashing again, we had to clean out the header, because the wheat was backed up that far from the jam.  LB and the Mechanic climbed up inside to clean it out.

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it!

Well, we got 'er cleaned out and ready to go!

Your Farm Friend

Amy