Milo Fun

With the combine all put back together and with the milo fingers installed on the platform, we went to cut Rod's Milo.

You can see the white milo fingers on the header. They are suppossed to keep the heads of milo from falling to the ground after they have been cut. They certainly don't work perfectly, but I guess they are better than nothing. I guess.

Problem(s) Solved. Sort of.

After we got Robert's corn cut, we went over and tried Boyd's sunflowers, which were too wet, and the milo on Thompson's, which was too wet. So the next day we got to work on a nagging combine problem. These levers are used to adjust the chaffer, which, along with the sieve underneath clean the grain. Different grains need different adjustments.
Problem is, the lever on the right developed a crack, which made it very difficult to make adjustments without breaking the whole thing off.


So I pulled the whole lever assembly out so dad could fix it. This involved some pretty good stretching. Note the chaffer on top, the sieve under that, and the return auger trough under that.
Dad welded a washer onto the lever, which fixed it right up. Except that I dropped my wrench in the process. Into the return auger trough.

The wrench did not want to come out. And I couldn't get it with my trusty magnet retriever either. It was apparently just laying flat on the bottom of the trough where it was safe from the auger and the magnet.
I don't remember whose idea this was, but I ended up dropping this paper towel wad down on the far side of the auger trough to flush the wrench out.

It (almost) worked perfectly.

Meet Princess Jewels!

AKA Joel(l)a Mae 11-26-08 6lb 10?oz 20in

A girl cousin!


Note the matching hats--Thanks Jo!



Happy Thanksgiving!

More Dry Corn Fun

Robert had me take his corn to Irsik & Doll. One of the best ways to increase harvesting efficiency is to not be hauling the same thing as everyone else. The line on the right is for corn that needs dried and soybeans, the line on the left is for dry corn. Nice.

If you are lucky, a train will go by while you are unloading.


My personal favorite part of Irsik & Doll is that you get to drive on the original US Highway 50. How fun is that!?

Dry Corn Fun.

Robert had me cut his corn for him. Dry corn is pretty fun to cut because it is so much easier on the combine so you can go pretty quick through the field. This was especially nice corn to cut because it was only running at 15% moisture (the standard for "dry corn" is 15.5%.)

You can see here what happens to the air intake screen on the tractor if the wind is right.The pink chaff comes from the outside of the corn cobs.

Yet Another Tire Post.

I don't know why I feel compelled to share every experience I have with tires. Anyways, I had a flat on the trailer, and had to get a whole new (used) tire. Sorry.

A Little Mud on the Tires.

Robert had me plant his wheat for him, which was an interesting experience. It was a little wet when I did it, but there was more rain in the forecast and it was getting pretty late to be planting wheat. It gave me a chance to try out my drill on conventional ground. I went ahead and took off all of the press wheel and closing wheel pressure and just went with a little bit of down pressure. John Deere advertises this drill as being able to plant into anything, but I was a little unsure. Anyways, the wheat all came up great so I guess I had it set pretty close to right.

This Just In: Snyder Ages 22 Years in Just Under 20 Years.

Bill Snyder is 47 on Dec 1, 1988.

Bill Snyder is 69 on Nov 24, 2008.

Rainy Day Blues. (And by "Blues," I Mean the Opposite of Blues.)

I stayed out super late all week planting my wheat and was rewarded with a whole bunch of rain--4-6" of rain. It gave my a nice break, a better outlook on next year, and a chance to get some work done on the row crop header (which we didn't end up using this year anyway.)

More mllr Approved Photography.

Since slightly blurry photography is apparently acceptable, here are a couple of shots for you to enjoy. This first one is a shot of planting wheat into the corn stalks. It is so nice to not have to disk the field twice or burn it before planting. Science + technology = a happy lobiwan.


This next shot is of the light switches on my Puma tractor. The designers of this tractor have gone to great lengths to disguise the fact that my "Case IH" tractor is actually a New Holland tractor painted red. But they overlooked the light switches. 1st of all, I have seen this layout before--in our 1988 Ford TW-25 in which I passed my adolescence. (Ford was purchased by New Holland which later merged with Case IH to form CNH.) And what about that picture!? Clearly a representation of a Ford Genesis tractor circa 1993. Those silly Brits!