So for the last week this how my harvest has been going...
...had to bring in a grain cleaner to separate the FM (foreign material) from my flax, something I can't do with the combine. The volunteer spring wheat, brown mustard & wild oats that grew after the 4 hail storms from June 23rd to July 14th, (1st storm was a week after in crop spraying), the FM is still quite green yet & raising the moisture to 11 to 13%, clean that crap out lowers my moisture in flax to 8.3%. Dry & storable flax is 9%.
It's really slow to clean flax, with some wild oats coming out the clean side, capacity is about 220 - 240 bushel/hr... with the days so short now & freezing almost every night, I only have about 7 to 9hrs cutting window, can't start before noon & done not long after dark, depending on the wind... soon as the wind is gone, it gets tough & plugs the knife. 1st field of flax 200ac, running about mid 20's bu/ac, by dark both tandems are full & combine too, cleaner going all day as well... start cleaning again at dawn, by noon less than half a tandem left to clean, I start combining & everything full again by dark. Took 3days to cut 200ac... normal conditions & earlier in the season with warmer weather, I cut 200ac a day.
When my peas & brown mustard got hammered in early June I just round-up the whole field of each crop cause I knew the weeds would choke out whatever came back. The 350ac flax field I'm in now showed some promise early on & I let it continue growing. It got golfball hail mid July & now it's a wreck with added costs & the bushels just aint there (1st 150ac less than 10bu/ac, probably averaging about 7, looks better further east). If I would have sprayed this field out last July I would be done!!! But the finish line is a couple days away.. providing my old shyt holds together...
...today was a day of breakdowns... my 20yo Onan motor on grain auger taking clean flax away from grain cleaner lost its spark, determined the problem to be the pickup coil behind the flywheel... could be next Tues before that be fixed
... a few hrs later later & $2700 brand new Kohler getting the show on the right track again... just after 5pm now get back on the combine, didn't go 300yds & blew a hyd hose on the header...
... less than 2hr of daylight left, after hrs charge of $50 +parts, it'll be tough before I get it fixed anyway... get er done in the morning.
20's & sunny on the wkend - changing to single digits & rain on Mon-Tues... may the gods be with me so I get this wreck of a yr done with already!!! The majority of farmers in my area were done a month ago.