Thursday, June 1 6, 2022

Well, we tried… the guys got the last parts of the grain system ready today, finally spraying an insecticide in the storage bins, scraping clean the load-out hopper bins, and cleaning the big unload pit.  The grain dryer is prepped and poised for action.  Those tasks (some of which began on Tuesday) took the morning today, while we waited for the dew to burn off.

Brandon took the CIH 8250 combine with its MacDon header to the wheat field about noon.  He eased around the first field between the house and the old silo, getting a few thousand pounds of wheat in the combine’s grain tank, mainly for the purpose of obtaining a proper sample to test for moisture content.  The combine read-out was about 21%, but when the sample hit the official tester, it reported 25.2%!   This moisture level caused us to hit the ‘stop’ button on harvest.  If the reading had been less than 20%, we would still be rolling.  Our best judgment tell us to allow the solar dryer to do its job for a few more days  The new thinking is that we will return with the combines on Monday.   As wheat harvest commences, we will calibrate the moisture meters in the combines, and make sure the yield measuring systems are as accurate as we can make them.  (In wheat, the combines are usually within 1% of the actual weighed yield.

First pass of wheat harvest 2022

We had to try…