Mid Summer Random Farm Pictures

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Before Wheat Harvest: Repairs to Deere 625F Bean/Grain Header and EZ Trail Header Cart

Many of the problems that we face are analogous to the "Fox, chicken, and a bag of feed" puzzle, in that the practical steps leading to a solution are often "hidden".

A farmer lives on a small plot of land next to a river. One day, he travels across the river in a small boat and purchases a fox, a chicken, and a bag of corn from a feed and supply store. When the farmer returns to his boat to cross the river again and go home, he realizes he has a dilemma.

The farmer can only take one item in his small boat at a time, otherwise he risks capsizing. He cannot leave the fox alone with the chicken, because the fox will eat the chicken. He cannot leave the chicken alone with the corn, because the chicken with eat the corn

How does the farmer successfully get all three items across the river?

 

The sickle bar on the bean head had a few broken teeth and knife guards, Dad/Gramps has been replacing them. There are a few other things to fix: The Crary Air input shaft needs to have the clutch repaired. I think there's a faulty hydraulic cylinder on the main reel as well as a leaking hydraulic hose that needs attention. Quite a few of the fingers on the auger need to be replaced. When all that is done we'll go over the sickle bar adjustment procedures in the Operator's Manual to make sure everything is running smoothly.

After repairs are finished the head will be used to harvest the spring wheat, which will be ready in about ten days. Right now I think, because of low weed pressure in the wheat, I can direct cut it with the bean head, rather than swathing it in windrows then using the pickup head to combine it. Assuming we get a little bit of moisture in the next couple of weeks I'm then planning on putting in a cover crop of peas, turnips, and radishes, as the berseem clover I underseeded the wheat with back in May failed to get established, I believe due to lack of moisture later in the month of May.

The original welds holding the tube to the cart were broken and the angled support bracket had been pushed about 1.25 inches toward the rear of the cart. Could have been caused by improperly putting the header on the cart, we're not sure.

I pushed the support bracket back in place using a steel wedge and rewelded the joints. The cart still needs to have two of the tires replaced: one is the wrong size, the other is bald/worn out.

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I welded a piece of scrap 4x4 tubing below the cart's 4x6 beam to act as a brace I could push against with the metal wedge in the next pic. Other pieces of scrap metal were clamped on to either act as spacers or to distribute the point load from the wedge along the length of the cart's vertical brace/leg.

I added some little gussets to help prevent any future cracks. There's a lot of stress on that little clamping plate. I'm not surprised the original welds cracked. Glad to have it taken care of, as having the head slide around while going down the highway would be a problem.

Repairs While I Wait for Some Rain

 We've had less than 1" of rain in the last 6 weeks. It's sprinkled a bit today and the forecast calls for a 50% chance an inch or so tomorrow. I hope we get it, as everything is already crispy and the forecast goes on to say the next 10 days will be 80º and sunny.

There's not much for me to do but get equipment ready.

 

My first attempt at welding cast iron. I've brazed it before with some success, this is going to be an experiment on a "low value" part. I'm using the Shark brand 11087 0.125" rod at 80 amps (220v). Any higher and I burned through. I increased it a bit on the following passes.  Looks like I should have used a carbide burr to widen the crack, not a grinding wheel. I went back and cleaned it up a bit before I added more weld.

 

Pics of the finished repair. Pretty happy with how it looks, there's a bit of weld undercut where I was too hot. The spatter/beads are cosmetic. The real test is to see if it holds up.

 

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Update on Corn and Wheat

 The corn is 3 to 4 feet tall and looks good, especially considering we've had roughly an inch of rain here in the last 5 weeks.

Here's what the corn looked like on June 10th, nine days after planting and six days after the first pass with the tine weeder.

 

 

 

Here's a video taken after the second pass with the row cultivator, June 28th.

 

In this video the corn has canopied, my cultivation is done for the year. Now its mostly out of my hands until the end of October and harvesting.

The spring wheat looks good. I have some issues with canadian thistle that I manage with cutting/chopping. First I tried by hand, with a Stihl FS 130. There's too much to do that way, so I was hoping to hire the landowner to bush hog them. He was unavailable and I ended up driving the 12 miles down there with our little open station tractor in some miserable heat to do it myself. We have a trailer that I could have used to haul it down there - however it needs to have the wiring for the turn signals/flashers redone/repaired. I didn't have the time to do that.

 

 

I expect to harvest the wheat in mid August, with some luck I'll be able to sell it as "food grade". I had underseeded the wheat with berseem clover and was hoping that would act as my cover crop after the wheat came off. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have established itself, possibly because of the very dry conditions we've had in the last 2 months. As a result the preexisting foxtail is coming on strong under the wheat. It looks like I'll have to disc that down and drill in another cover of something like radish/oat/peas after the wheat is harvested.

Next up is getting the combine ready to harvest the wheat. I also have about 20 repair projects to start in on. My new (to me) Deere 693 corn head is waiting to be picked up at the nearby Deere dealer. I've bought the Calmer replacement rolls to put in it.

I'm Watching the Weather More Than Usual

 As you may know, it's been a warm (now hot) and dry year.

Corn is Out of the Ground: Time to Focus on Repairs

 Three days after planting I did the first blind cultivation with the tine weeder. That went well, after some glitches, and the corn is about 3" tall. It's been a very dry year; hardly any rain in the spring, no rain the last 10 days and the forecast shows a 50% chance of getting a total of 0.25" of rain in the next 10 days.

We could use some rain.

It's been very hot, with highs in the mid 90s. I work early in the morning out in the shop to avoid as much heat as possible.

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I pressure washed the disc, planter, and 7140 tractor.

The original support stand was too short. It holds up the back of the tine weeder when it's off the tractor. Attaching the weeder "leaning back" causes three point hitch to bind up when taking the weeder off the tractor as well as putting a lot of pressure on the bottom tines. I welded a length of tube on the existing stand and still need to drill some holes in it. Ultimately I think I'll get a Gnuse hydraulic top link to make this all work better. In the meantime...

I think this will work. The stand is meant to slide into the vertical sleeve - the roughly 10" long red square tube just above the stand that has a hole through it.

I bought Calmer rolls to replace the ones on the new 693 Deere corn head (not here yet) I bought. Once the head gets here I'll install them.

The old shed is getting a little crowded. (The modified tine weeder stand is in the foreground on the little welding table.)

Finished Planting Corn

It took me three days to plant the corn, Albert Lea Seeds "Viking" O45-88-P, on 100 acres. 

I planted 33,000 seeds/acre at a depth of 2.25 inches. There was moisture at this depth, and this will give me a few days to get the first tine weeding pass done. The soil above the seed, in the row of corn, will have a lot of tiny ungerminated weed seeds in it. In the next 3 days I'll go over the fields with the tine weeder set to about 1.25 inches deep and hopefully get rid of most of those potential weeds.

The planting went well. Dad did the final tillage pass with the disc the day before I planted. The weather and machinery cooperated and things look good.

A couple short video clips from the tractor.

 

 

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A view of the split computer screen in the tractor. On the left side is the path taken by the GPS to guide the tractor (I'll save the map so I can return to the same lines to row cultivate); on the right is a seed monitor for the planter. It shows the real time data of each row of seed as well as how close I am to my goal of 33,000 seeds/acre. "Doubles" means 2 seeds getting planted at once. "Singulation" is what you want - 1 seed placed.

Our Deere 7200 Planter. It lets me plant into the rough seedbed made by the last tillage pass of the disc. In doing so, I'm making its "No-till" design work in our production system.

The 7140 Case, our "workhorse" tractor, is attached to the disc. In the background, to the right, I've hooked up the tine weeder to the same tractor (Deere 8100) I used to pull the planter. As I mentioned above I'll use the GPS map/paths I created when planting to guide my (probably four) weeding passes.

I have some minor repairs to do to the planter and disk. They'll get pressure washed and put away for the year.