Wheat Watch: Harvest Edition

We made it through the first week of harvest and we completed about 1200 acres of dry land wheat.  I have been operating a combine for about 10 to 12 hours a day. We have three combines running this year.  The two newer combines we had spent the last couple of weeks getting ready, and an older one that Brent had one of his guys work on as a side project.  We also had one of the four wheel drive tractors pull a grain cart.

Everyday before we get started I spend about 1 to 2 hours greasing all of the bearings on the combines, blowing out the radiators, and fueling up.  In IT we used to say things like "this software has a lot of moving parts..."  Working on a combine everyday kind of makes that sound stupid to me now because there are literally moving parts EVERYWHERE on these combines.  

Brent has gotten a lot of really great pictures of harvest.  Most of these are from his camera:

The grain cart is a pretty awesome to have during harvest.  It allows you to keep cutting wheat while you are unloading the grain that is in your bin.  Every time I unload while I'm cutting it reminds me of the of the jet fighters getting refueled in the air by KC - 135 Stratotankers. Except instead of loading with fuel, I'm unloading grain.

The below picture was taken last night when we had about 10 acres left to cut and the sun was going down.  I am unloading my combine into the grain cart:

This is another perspective of offloading into the grain cart while cutting wheat:

On a side note it was a little hot this week...

- Grease Monkey/Combine Operator Ryan