Your moisture tester has to be wrong ....

I cut beans Friday!

I know, no big deal, right?  I think it was the first beans I cut this year.  In fact, I think it was only the second time I ran the combine.  Aman runs the combine and I haul.  Works out well.   He wasn't feeling too well today, so I told him to rest and haul in a couple loads of beans if he felt up to it.

I should mention the other time I ran the combine a belt broke after one round.

Anyway, I'm cutting the last "big" field of beans.  Big meaning when I finish it we have 30 acres of first crop beans left ... in 6 fields.

 

I start on this last big field.  They're going through good, but boy do they look rough.  Green stems,  green and yellow leaves, really rough looking.  This photo doesn't do it justice.

I put the first hopper in the truck and they looked even worse.

 So I told Aman to run a sample home and check the moisture.  He called me.

"The wet sample was 11.2%"

yep, moisture tester HAS to be broken.

I cut beans until after sundown.  I quit just in time.  Beans quit working good just about sunset.  I made a couple rounds and decided to quit.  I unloaded, cleaned the combine off, and got in to come home when I noticed the left end of the reel wasn't raised.  I hit the button and it raised ... then settled down again.  I got off, checked the left cylinder, no problem.  Walked around to the right end to find hydraulic fluid dripping off it.  Sometime between my cleaning off the end of the head and getting back on the combine I blew the hose.  (I hear someone going "Wait a minute, you said left ..." The left cylinder is a slave off the right side.  The hydraulic oil goes to the right side cylinder and then feeds the left cylinder.)

Remember my comment about the other time I ran the combine this fall?  I may get delegated to permanent truck driver status.  So Saturday in addition to setting an auger, unloading trucks, and normal maintenance I get to replace a hose.  I decided to let it go until morning.

Oh, setting an auger. The elevator is currently out of space for beans.  Fortunately we anticipated this might happen and kept one bin empty just in case we had to have some bean room.

We've made pretty good progress on harvest.  We have 40 acres of corn left.  It was replanted and when I checked moisture Wednesday it was 20%. (that was the elevator's tester by the way) I decided to let nature dry it a bit more and went back to beans.

As I mentioned earlier, when we finish this field (hopefully tomorrow) we'll have 6 fields left of first plant beans totaling 30 acres.  We haven't planted any wheat yet.   Fly free date is October 6, and I don't get too excited until after October 1.

Oh yeah, that's today.