Re: Something new to rc
 

Sounds likes a tough go this harvest season. Calgary seemed to be a world of hurt with the fresh snowfall too.

How's the new harvester operating?

Re: Something new to rc
 

Having a few electronic/hydraulic issues with the auto header height, the Honey Bee draper header is not following the ground contour as smoothly as it did with the 3 previous combines it was on. I haven't determined yet if it's the combine's software or the potential meters on the header itself... combining 1 day a week for the last month makes it difficult to fine tune the combine, as I try not to waste any time while it's good cutting weather.

30% chance of rain tomorrow... it's been cloudy & cold all week... some guys were talking this morning of trying canola this afternoon... my yard is still a bit muddy, I doubt the spr wht is dry, maybe I try some brown mustard tomorrow to see where it's at for maturity.

I dug thru junkyards this morning looking for brake pot bolts & found 3 useable bolts, the rest were seized in the pot. I found 3 new ones at a couple trk part stores. Finish getting this tractor/pup ready to go this afternoon in case it's too soft for the trk to travel about the field. I ordered a remote camera this morning to help with backing up to the auger, but it won't be here till Monday.

My brother lives in Calgary, I haven't spoke to him yet as to how much the snow has damaged trees in his yard. :confused: But yeah, a lot of down trees, a lot of power outages! The area saw nearly two feet of dense snow. I'm sure all the crops in the surrounding area will be flat on the ground! My cereal crops are leaning southward pretty bad, I may have to cut at angle, which will be a little rough crossing the seed rows... I still have more than a 1000ac of spring & winter wht to do yet. The oilseeds are still upright.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Hi Joe,
My wife grew up on a farm in central Illinois. She is curious what you mean when you say "cereal crops". We could only guess.

Kent

Re: Something new to rc
 

Cereal grains - spring wheat, winter wheat, durum wheat, rye, CPS or Canada Prairie Spring wheat (soft white wheat, high starch, great for ethanol production, also great for animal feed), barely, oats, triticale (animal feed crop)... I'm sure there's other cereals to add to the list, but that's what I have grown over the yrs.

Oilseeds - Canola, soybeans, yellow/brown/oriental mustards, yellow/brown flax. There's a new variety of mustard in recent yrs that is use in the manufacturing of jet fuel from its extracted oil, I can't remember what it's called.

Pulse crops or legumes - yellow/green peas, red/green lentils, kabuli/desi chick peas is what's grown in my area.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Thanks for info!

Re: Something new to rc
 

Sorry to hear about your long harvest Joe. I like your Tractor / Pup setup.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Were you able to get most of your crop out of the field Joe?

Re: Something new to rc
 

I have about a day's worth of cutting left to do... this afternoon was 4hrs & 3 trips to town for parts to fix the knife drive... and right when I quit @10pm I discover a bearing failure on the rotary screen drive, I hope they have parts in stock & get it running by noon so I can finish tomorrow. :thinking:

Re: Something new to rc
 

DONE!!!

..but not without another two trips to town again today for various parts on the header. The air temp dropped about 10 degrees the past two days over the two previous & made the flax straw difficult to cut...

Overall this crop yr was kind of a dismal one b/c of excessive rainfall in June with very little sunshine, drowned & thinned a lot of crop in its infancy, then excessive rains throughout later August & September bit into crop quality with staining, sprouts... I'll pretty sure I'm still in the black for the yr, but not by much...

Never did have to use that tractor/pup, thank goodness, I think it would have really slowed down production!

Go out on Monday with the combine to do a little mowing... remove the clean grain & return doors, close off the sieves to mow off several weedy patches I had to cut around in the mustard... the mustard is really sensitive to moisture, dry is under 9%... green seeds from kochia & pig weed could cause hot spots in the bin & spoil the whole the bin in short order if left unchecked. I have temperature cables in the bin that I can plug in with a monitor outside to check for any such hotspots after I turn the fan off. I'll be checking all my bins weekly till xmas.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Joe! You gonna make it to Estevan for the show? Lots of trucks this year!

Re: Something new to rc
 

How many trucks? Is there more than 3 yous now?

Are you gonna have REAL dirt or rubber dirt?

Re: Something new to rc
 

Sorry rubber and grain. Cleanup is to much for only a couple guys.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Here's a vid showing my Apache 1220 sprayer from last spring... you can see near the start of the vid all the water in my corals.

http://youtu.be/N33HgUR1omc

Re: Something new to rc
 

How fast does the sprayer go? Seems to trot along at a good pace. :)
Good amount of water, think it'll go away this Spring?

Re: Something new to rc
 

Thanks for posting Joe, as always lots of questions, the brown fenced areas I take are your corals, do you do livestock also?
When your spraying does the computer control the throttle/speed for proper application or just steering?
One more, is the green on the screen the area that's been sprayed?

Re: Something new to rc
 

Top speed is suppose to be 36mph, but I have after market tires on it that are quite a bit wider & a bit taller, according to the GPS top speed is 42mph. I spray full throttle in 4th gear, speedometer on console says 18mph, GPS says 22.4mph.

It's gonna take a few drought yrs to make all that water go away. Last two summer's rainfall accumulations have been 18inch each yr. I took these pics yesterday, the water level currently is a bit lower than last Spring judging by the shoreline, but Spring runoff might not be done yet.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps8dwcsxvp.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psfm8eee7s.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psdppoah4w.jpg

Kent, I did have 150 head beef cows, mostly red Angus until Dec 2011 when I had a herd dispersal.

The Raven computer has an auto rate controller that will match the correct volume of water/chemical to whatever speed I'm travelling. Most of the spraying I do is 5.9us ga/ac, some chemicals require 10us ga or I'll spray either liquid fertilizers up to 13us ga/ac or foliar fertilizers up to 8us ga/ac. A change in speed, the rate controller will open/close a valve to match the volume needed & will also vary the water pressure too almost instantly, maybe a 1 to 3 second delay depending on how sudden the change in speed.

The auto steer is a seperate controller, but it is tied into the primary monitor.

Yes, whatever is painted green is what has been sprayed. There is a few other colors too, red will appear when the volume drops more than 20% below target, usually when the tank is nearly empty & sump sucking air occassionally. Purple when volume is 20% heavy, usually when I have to slow down suddenly to cross a washout. I have auto shutoff, the boom is split up into 5 sections, when 100% of 1 section is on the green, that section will shut off automatically, keeping overlap to an absolute minimum. For headlands I have the shutoff delay at 0sec & turn on 4sec advanced, I don't want any misses. ;)

Re: Something new to rc
 

Thanks for the info Joe, it's really interesting how technology has advanced farming!

Re: Something new to rc
 

So I finally got my air drill home yesterday (gone 2 weeks), hooked up to Big Red and activated the hyd lever for fan/manifold/auger... even though 3pos lever on seed cart was set to fan, apparently some oil still flows through auger circuit... and my view from the cab to see the conveyer with air drill in transport is not great... about 20 hyd fittings & I forgot to tighten only one - sprayed the seed cart tank & conveyer & air drill... ohhhh what a mess in less than 3secs, probably less than half a gallon, but it painted everything with oil. :(

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps1e0zatgh.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psrjgb3riv.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psb8nawjp5.jpg

With the tube screw auger before, that double pivot arm off the main arm was 16 inches length, but with this rectangular shaped conveyer that arm had to be 40 inches and with the now added leveraged weight it made it impossible for me to manually move that arm out away from seed cart so I could get the discharged end of the conveyer to clear the top railing & tank fill doors. So then I had no choice but to add a 2" bore, 12" stroke hydraulic cylinder.

I got my welder/fab man coming tomorrow to change the hyd cyl mount on the main arm so when the cyl is fully retracted it pulls that 40" arm back even further. Plus I need a metal hanger added to other end of 40" arm to support the hyd hoses up out of the way of pivot points.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps9r0wy6sl.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pstb8dtb0h.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psyq6jqc54.jpg

The conveyer needs to be atleast another foot to the right of the picture so I can get my tank lids open to fill.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pselbbdtv1.jpg

The supports for transport were simple enough to fabricate. I just got to add puck board for a wear/rub strip where the aluminum contacts on the upper & lower steel support.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pspfotdjkr.jpg

The conveyer itself runs awesomely quick & smooth & QUIET!!! hmmm sweeeet :)

Re: Something new to rc
 

Whats been going on lately Joe? We got this years wheat crop in the bins.

Re: Something new to rc
 

I desiccated some durum yesterday, do some more next week, it'll be Sept 1st before that's ready to combine... I'll have to desiccate the flax too, probably start mid Sept... so much hail this yr on the entire farm, the durum I was spraying yesterday, majority looked short & thinned out... :rolleyes:

This week I combined what little peas I could salvage from the hail, about 30ac, got most of my seed back from 400ac planted.

Some guys around here are harvesting fantastic crops & have been going since Aug 1st, some are better than half done already...

Re: Something new to rc
 

So for the last week this how my harvest has been going...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pspdxqimeo.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psvxbgcxdq.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps2xndqmkk.jpg

...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 :mad:... 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...:rolleyes:... 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.

Re: Something new to rc
 

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/...pstbkdxkzf.jpg

Thanks Joe for sharing what you go through and all the hard work you guys do each and every year. :cool:

Re: Something new to rc
 

Great caption! Thanx buddy :cool:

Today was a productive day acre wise, not so much yield wise though less than 3 full tandems, but I am under the 100ac mark... start again before noon, no hiccups & I'll be done before dark! :jump:

A couple pics at sunset... the tall yellow stuff is FM

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psp9vrx6er.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps7xgchh8o.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps2x3lypdr.jpg

Re: Something new to rc
 

Good stuff Joe, sorry to hear you had such a bad year. Not much you can do about Mother Nature.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Yeah Kent, Mother Nature was a real big "C" to me this yr! :(

...anyways, got done combining mid afternoon yesterday, that last field of flax averaged out about 6,5bu/ac, sample not real good with green seeds & some very dark ones too.

Moved cleaner over to my house today to clean durum for seed next spring, couple more truckloads to do tomorrow, should be done by noon. Then it's just clean equipment, oil changes & put stuff away for winter storage the rest of the week. Mail out some grain samples & start making some deals... another couple weeks of farming yet before I can retire to the Lil Giants workshop for the winter. :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pspakfzjsp.jpg

Re: Something new to rc
 

So did you get everything done for the season so you can go back to digging a tunnel?

Re: Something new to rc
 

For the most part, yes... just doing some grain hauling, soil sampling right now & trying to figure out fertilizer blends & what to grow next yr & where.

Re: Something new to rc
 

What I've been working on the last couple weeks at the farm shop, mounting cross box augers on my tandem & pup so I can drive along side of air drill fill auger to load product into cart. Only need to take one trk to the field instead of two, saves time moving equipment around.

Took trk & pup to town a few days ago to plumb all the hyd hoses, hard to fathom it took 226 feet of braided hose. I had to plumb this trk so it would dumped the pup as well, before it was just the red Mack R that could pull the pup.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pszkxz0dvl.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps9hv9q2mp.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psqhpuwyjm.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psxpdovugt.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psbzfzi16k.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psycauzgme.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps2tibpasq.jpg

Couple more hrs of tinkering to do securing all the hoses to keep them away from moving parts & pinch points. Try it out next week hauling home granular fertilizer for this spring's planting.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Looks like a good setup. Will save travel time for sure. What's the plan for the ol' red mack? It looks like a beast of a truck.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Those cross box augers weigh about 150lbs each, so I won't be taking them on/off just whenever. The red Mack will be used to chased down 3 different seed varieties from different seed growers prior to start of seeding. Plus I got 2 railcars of flax to deliver to an elevator 1st part of April, 15 mile haul. Hook the red Mack onto the quad axle belly dump & get 'er done.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Finally a beautiful day here again with sunshine +15, working at the farm shop to put in these dual hose holders, the base is steel & I can weld it in place anywhere.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps849eea2e.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...pszx24zmje.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psrqmbj2e5.jpg

Just got to get a couple more for the pup.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psfqaypaky.jpg

Re: Something new to rc
 

Hey Joe, what year is your white CH Mack?
Cheers!

Re: Something new to rc
 

'97

Re: Something new to rc
 

Same as my CL.
Cheers!

Re: Something new to rc
 

I spent the last couple of days hauling granular fertilizer home, the crossbox augers themselves worked very well, but some refinement with the hyd supply is in need... the reservoir is too small, the oil gets blistering hot! Then the valves for dump & auger drive don't work freely, and then it can get hairy to operate smoothly. The temps last couple days start out -2 & rise to +10... during seeding temps could be in the 20's. Hopefully I can get it sorted out in the next week without too much additional expense.

The pup's auger will over supply the 10" auger, tractor running full throttle @540 pto rpm. Dump 12mt in about 10 mins. Then dumping the trk, the tractor is running maybe half throttle, the oil extremely hot!! takes about 20 min to unload 11mt.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psjsrcwrm4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psex7nbuhe.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psjcvmyo3v.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7SozR7F-X8

Re: Something new to rc
 

It's to bad they couldn't have made the long runs out of aluminum tubing to help disapate some of the heat in the fluid along with the larger reservoir.

Re: Something new to rc
 

The tank that's on the trk is about 5ga... after 2nd day of use I went to look at somebody else I know that has these same augers on his trk & pup, his reservoir is about 30ga and he's had no issues in the ?yrs he's been using it spring & fall, up to 30's temp.

Start doing some phoning/shopping around Monday to see what I can do to rectify the situation.

Re: Something new to rc
 

Got the call today to haul my flax in... it'll be loaded into 2 railcars end of April - 1st week of May. Couple hrs checking tires, oil levels, grease & load 'er up with secondary weights... I was a few tonne under, but the grid road is still too soft in places... such a mild winter & it seems to be taking longer than usual for the frost to leave the ground. :rolleyes:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psybhrqwtm.jpg

Doing some phoning around last couple days to figure out what to do next with other trk's hyds... tomorrow I'll order a 25ga oil tank with valves on it, that's essentially 5x bigger than the tank I currently have. From what I'm told that volume will solve my excessive heat issues with the oil.

Re: Something new to rc
 

That hydraulic setup is pretty slick. Unloading in style. :cool:
What's the end destination for the flax?

The granular fertilizer, do you convert it to liquid form, or apply it as is?

Re: Something new to rc
 

I don't know about style, but it's much quicker & easier than jack knifing. :)

The flax buyer is a China company, don't know how or what they'll produce... not sure what coast it's going to either to be off loaded from railcar to container. Payment is 10 days after it's emptied from railcar.

The granular fertilizer will be applied as is with my air drill. I hired an agrologist last fall to do soil sampling & make fertilizer blend & rate recommendations. It's been an El Nino winter here, much warmer than past years, but still got a fair amount snow or rain all winter, spring moisture is very good. But the summer forecast is predicting drier than normal. :confused: So I'm going to back off fertilizer rate 25% from agrologist's suggested #'s & if the moisture is looking good to great up to flag leaf, then I may top up nutrient levels with liquid fert then, applied with my Apache field sprayer.

After last yr's weather wreck with so much hail, got to proceed this yr with some caution with how much money I put into the ground, especially if it's a possibility of being a drought yr, something we haven't seen since 2006, which is very unusual for this area.

It started spitting rain an hour ago, looks like it's gonna carry on for few hrs yet, can't load flax in the rain, the seed gets wet it will stick to the metal box like glue... even after it's dried, it's stuck to the box. Then I got to use a metal paint scraper to get it out!!! not fun. :rolleyes: ...off to the basement to do some digging in the tunnel. :D