Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Today, we are waiting for the straw baling crew to finish at the Crook farm so that we can get it sprayed and planted.  They are working there today, even though rain is threatening.  Hopefully, they will get their bales rolled up and stacked out of the way.  Then we can move with the sprayer and planter.  The Crook farm is the last remaining location to plant DCB.  There will be some replanting to be done at the White River bottom farm locations as soon as the water leaves and the areas dry up.  The flood event was not helpful, but could have been oh so much worse.  There will be dozens of acres to replant, not hundreds.

In the meantime, we are cleaning stuff up from the wheat harvest.  We discovered some wheat ‘beards’ plugging the pre-cleaner in the JD 9770.  Turns out that the problem is a left-over from the wet soybean harvest of November 2012.  A small grain pan under the pre-cleaner was caked over with bean residue and dust, and stopped the rearward movement of grain through that part of the cleaning system.  Brandon and Nick worked on pulling out the plug yesterday, and I helped this morning.  We did manage to get it cleared and clean… ready for fall harvest.  It was a rather unpleasant task.  (See the post for September 21, 2012, for a similar story)

After working exhaustively on the inner threshing mechanism, the 9770 is now on the wash pad. It will soon look like new!

The trucks are washed, and the JD combine is now on the wash pad.   I guess that when we say things are ‘paused’, it only refers to field work.   There has certainly not been any pause in the work here at the farm!