Intro:
If your reading this, then you have probably already seen my blog of the 2004 harvest run. This is a generalized recap of what I learned on the harvest run.
Getting started:
Back in the fall of 2003 it had crossed my mind how sweet it would be to go on a custom harvesting run. Having never done this before, I'm thinking it's like a guided tour of the Midwest, all expenses paid. If I was ever to just leave my normal life for a few months, now was a very good time to do so. A wife and children would have made this an impractical venture later in life. I looked around the Internet in search of a custom harvester. First I just had a couple questions, but that soon progressed into an application. My background has been around Case IH combines. I thought about running another brand for the diversity. For example, if I ran Deeres and liked them, I'd urge everyone around here to switch. If I hated the Deeres, then I'd be stuck running a combine I disliked for the summer. To be on the safe side, I stayed with Case IH machinery since I knew more about what I was getting in to. I contacted Lance at Johnson Harvesting and everything took off from there. At the time, I hadn't driven a semi before, but it was much preferred to have a CDL on harvest. It allows more flexibility among operators, plus it's nice to drive a truck after spending a while in a combine. In December I had a little while to take the written tests to get my Class A CDL. That wasn't nearly as tough as I thought it should be. If any of you reading this is are planning to go on a custom harvesting run, be sure to get your CDL before you start. It isn't required, but just trust me on this and get the CDL if you can. FYI, your state may require a DOT health card to get a CDL, but you do not need one as a custom harvester.
First days:
Since the weather determines when the season starts, I didn't know the exact start date until May. I was told to show up on a Monday, thinking we will head south early Tuesday morning. Wrong. I didn't realize that everything needed to be loaded up yet. I met the rest of the crew that Monday afternoon and we all worked for a couple days getting everything ready to go south. During this time we got to see how the combines and grain carts get loaded and chained down. On Thursday we left for OK. We split into 2 groups so we didn't have one long caravan. It was right at 1000 miles from MN to OK, split into 2 full days of driving. Since I was new to the world of big trucks, I drove a pickup truck south. Still, I was pulling a 42' crew trailer. Overall it was a slightly bigger vehicle than the Subaru WRX that I normally drive.
Southern States:
I expected it to be really hot down south. Fortunately the wheat matures in the south in early summer before the high heat of July and August arrives. The hottest days we commonly saw were 100 degrees. Typically we greased the combines up in the morning while it was still cool out so it wasn't that big of a deal. We were then in the combine cabs while it was really hot outside in the peak of the day. Air conditioning is great - I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been to harvest wheat 50 years ago without even a cab.
Northern States:
As we got into the Dakotas, we began harvesting crops other than just wheat. Peas, barley, canola, and mustard to name a few. My personal favorite is probably barley for its gorgeous golden color. The canola was probably the most difficult of them all due to it thrashing very hard. With a 30 foot swath of high yielding canola on a damp day, the stems just didn't want to grind up well. I think I personally broke 5 rotor belts in canola, but not 1 in any other crop. There were times where we would try to unload on the go with the grain cart, but the tractor in first gear at an idle was too fast for the combine. After several hours at about 1 MPH, 2 or 3 MPH is like flying.
Wheat Varieties:
Most of what we cut was either winter wheat or spring wheat. To me, not knowing a whole lot about wheat, they seem about the same. They seem to cut, thrash, and yield about the same. We cut a few fields of a variety known as Tam. Even though it yielded similar to other varieties in the area, it was a pain to harvest. It had a problem with shelling out in the header of the combine. This would create piles of shelled wheat in the header that would be pulled into the throat of the combine in one big pile. That then caused the throat to plug and we would have to stop and reverse the header a bit. Note that this is only a problem with auger headers - a draper header would not have been affected by this. Another variety we cut was Durum wheat. Apparently Durum can only be grown in certain climates such as parts of North Dakota. When harvesting Durum, the teeth on the reel of the header tend to grab the stem of the wheat a pull it up. This causes the stems to go around with the reel and not feed evenly. I tried adjusting the speed, fore/aft, and up/down of the reel to get it to feed better, but nothing seemed to really work good. It just tends to bunch up and feed into the throat in piles. I am told the cause of this is that it has a waxy stem that pulls apart easily. This can either plug the throat or make the rotor growl. Again, this is where a draper header can increase productivity over an auger header.
Draper Headers:
The draper concept is the new upcoming technology in headers. The consistent even feeding into the throat is far superior to that of an auger header. The only downside that I ever saw with the drapers was when we were cutting in a field that had a lot of kosha (a green bushy weed). Kosha had a tendency to wrap around the rollers and stick to the belt. There were places that we would go around with the drapers and use another combine with an auger header to harvest that part of the field. All in all, this was a very minor and rare drawback. If you have gone through the 2004 harvest blog, you may notice that I don't have much info about the drapers in there. The reason for this is that I ran an auger header most of the time, but also that some of the headers we used were experimental with non-disclosure agreements and such.
Living conditions and food:
The crew trailers are basically like a RV, but modified for the harvest run. They have better insulation and stronger air conditioning that a typical RV. As with most of the custom harvesters, food is part of the deal. You get to make your own breakfast, but there are several options in the trailers. The other two meals are taken care of. Both Deb and Rachel can cook up some awesome food. I don't think anyone on our crew lost weight this season. If for some reason Deb or Rachel weren't around (like at the very beginning of the season), we would eat at a restaurant wherever we were.
Back in Iowa:
I will say that after five and a half months on the road, it was nice to get home. The season here was running late too. I was back in time to finish up the soybeans and corn. The 25' headers we have weren't too bad getting used to again. After you look at a 30' for a while, you develop a driving line against the uncut crop to keep the header full. That line moves 2.5 feet when going to the other size of header. I did notice that I had a smoother driving style the more I ran.
Again?
Well I don't think I can get another 6 month vacation from work. To me, this was more of a vacation than a job or anything else. I do plan to visit and maybe help out for a short time in the upcoming season. I had a blast this summer and would certainly recommend it to anyone else. It's a great experience.
- Lance
Finish that round:
Thrashing canola one evening at ~2 MPH in a field that is a mile long. After just turning around at the end by the trucks to start another round, I hear that we will be quitting when we are done with the round we are on. I quickly do the math in my head on this. Since the field is a mile long, that's 2 miles for this round. I'm only going 2 miles per hour which means it will take at least an hour yet. That's the best case. However, it is almost dusk and the dew is starting to set in which mean I will have to drive even slower. I couldn't determine if this was serious or a joke. At one point I even thought that the dew may set in fast enough that I will have to quit before I can even finish the round. Over an hour later, I finally finished the round.
The Ford truck commercial:
We were southbound to OK in our convoy. We are about 15 miles away from a major truck stop where we are planning to refuel everything. One of the older trucks with smaller fuel tanks runs out of fuel on a small, quiet, two lane road. Note that this is a triple axle straight truck, 30' header in the box, and pulling a 2388 on a combine trailer behind the truck. Apparently the head wind we were fighting was a little harder on the fuel consumption than normal. So this truck rolls to a stop in the left lane since the primary fuel tank is on the right side of the truck. For cases like this, we have 200 gallons of diesel on reserve in a tank in the box of the pickup at the end of the convoy. The idea here is that we will pump off about 30 gallons from that reserve to get the truck to the truck stop that we were planning to stop at. We pump about 30 gallons over and try to start the truck. Unfortunately the fuel pump has taken in enough air that we cannot get it to prime so that it will pump the fuel up to the engine. After 30 minutes of trying to get it to prime, we give up and decide that we need to use the tools on the service truck that is now a half mile down the road. We can't turn that truck around or back it up due to the hopper trailer it is pulling. End result, we need to get this dead truck down the road to the service truck. Fortunately it still has enough air to release the brakes. It will roll. We pull a heavy duty rope out of a tool box on the pickup and hook it up from the crew trailer bumper to the bumper of the dead truck. And down the road we go. Let me recap this for you. We have a Ford F350 pulling a bumper hitch 42 foot crew trailer, pulling a straight truck with a header in the box, pulling a trailer with a 2388 combine on it. Looking back at the situation, we should have taken some pictures.
A long night:
During the soybean harvest, we had several days where it was cold and wet. One particular day we tried to run, but the ground was still too sticky from the recent rains and the header just wouldn't work right in the mud. The only plus side was that it was cold, below freezing in fact. At about 9:30 PM we tried combining the soybeans and to my surprise, they cut and thrashed awesome. It was like they were at 10% moisture. Once Blane any myself were satisfied that this was going to work, we decided to keep the combine running all night long. I left Blane at 10:30 and slept till 4:00 AM. I met Blane back at the combine at 4:30 to swap so he could go get some sleep. My plan was to cut till about 10:00 when I would need Blane to bring the fuel truck over to refuel the combine. At 9:30 AM however, I found out that there truly is no reserve below the 'E' on the fuel gauge. I was doing a 3 point U-turn while opening up the headlands on another field. The rocking motion of the combine got some air into the system and the engine stopped. Note that it didn't just stop. Since I didn't have any crop in the machine, the rotor was acting as a flywheel and whole machine would probably have ran for 5 seconds without the engine on. Hydrostat and everything, it was an odd feeling to loose power slowly like that. Of course I disengaged the rotor and then everything just stopped, right there. Now keep in mind the sun is now up and the temperature is again above freezing. The field is muddy. I call Blane on the phone, explain the situation and my location. He arrives with the pickup truck and fuel trailer. This is where the fun really starts. Since the field was muddy, we could only get the pickup and fuel trailer 100 feet from the combine before the pickup couldn't pull it any further. Dilemma: We have a combine that can pull anything, but is out of fuel. We have 200 gallons of fuel 100 feet away, but cannot move it either. Blane and I just laugh at the situation - so close, but so far away. We come to the conclusion that there is some road diesel in the extra tank on the pickup - we'll use 10 gallons of that to get the combine started. Once we get the combine going and over to the fuel trailer, we filled it up the rest of the way. We hook the pickup back up to the trailer, which is now much lighter because of the fuel we pumped out. We then use the combine to pull the pickup back out of the field. Lesson of the day - try not to run out of fuel, especially in a location inaccessible by a fuel truck.