Harvest 2021 has officially begun!

hey there guys how's it going um we are nicely getting going combining here on lentils um i'll talk about that in a minute what i wanted to bring to your attention is uh we have both mechanics down today we got john deere down working on that combine and also working on the two tracks the two track is throwing up some weird stuff you'll be driving along uh pulling your grain cart and it goes it dies so it's got wiring issues something's something's gotta be going on because uh you can be high idled at like 1800 rpm and driving and it's like you just shut the ignition off it's just the tractor just comes to a screeching halt and that's it and then you can't get it going again so there's a few gremlins that they're trying to find right now so as you can see there's the john deere truck it's working on the combine and on the combine i think they're just doing some i guess i'm not sure what they're doing to the combine maybe they're working on the header that is the new 745 uh hydroflexed onto your header i think they're working on that header actually for someone no reason and over here on the fent idea let me get this winter wiper out of the way for you guys there you go um there's a bearing gone on the back on one of the back shaft somewhere and it decided it was going to spring a bit of an oil leak out of a gearbox and uh oh yeah it threw up a def coat put itself into limp mode and it also basically died so yeah you can you can only idle it around like 900 rpm uh with death issues so there's three things going on with that one and uh so yeah this is just a typical day i'm not making this up this is a pretty classic day it's not a matter of if you're gonna have a john deere tech or a ideal tech down here bent a coat deck i guess i should say just a matter of how many times they're going to be coming down here to be fair to be fair we really don't have that many john deere techs coming down to be fair but the fent ideal combines unfortunately it is an everyday occurrence so we're gonna get that combine up and running here today hopefully and uh we'll drop another one at some point this afternoon we might even drop two you never know the day is young still you guys it's still i don't know like 11 o'clock in the morning we've been going for a little while um it is beginning of august and uh we are combining red lentils now this is a really really really really really poor red lentil crop and there's a lot of grasshoppers in fact the john deere combines over there they've actually been having issues with their re-thrashers what's a re-thrasher well that's a really good it's a really good question so on a john deere you have your tailings and instead of bringing your tailings back up to the side on the back up the side of the combine drop it back in on your main rotor it actually has its own little rotor type d a little cylinder type thing i have to show you it's it's completely separate doesn't drop it back in the main rotor it kind of tries to do a little re-thrashing on its own these things don't have really a rethrash i think they call them a re-thrasher it's not a re-thrasher it's basically a single bat with like one rub bar and it just hucks it back in hugs it back into the combine but anyways uh we're actually plugging the wreath rashers on the john deere's with grasshoppers like that's saying something it will take them right up in there and uh it will plug them and then what happens if you plug your tailings is you actually end up looking you plug your wreath rash or you plug your tailings so then you're always running out there and you're trying to dump it you're trying it took us a long time to figure out what the crap that's going on you know we're adjusting the tears we're dressing the concave we're dressing the rotors you know we're like what the heck is going on like did like a little shower did come through but like what the heck once you start digging apart it's all plugged up with grasshopper cuts uh do you get grasshoppers in your tank well i just dumped so i would like to show you guys that but we're gonna have to wait probably about two hours while i combine and then hopefully in two hours i'll have enough that i can actually show you in the bottom of my hopper mike it can't possibly be going that bad it is it is going that bad so this field is averaging i think this feels probably gonna do about three bushel an acre that's pretty good we just came off of one that was doing 2.5 and then the one before that actually did zero zero to one zero dash to one so basically we bring a truck out we all come combine we all combine all day long with all the combines like eight combines or however many we got out here and then we bring the truck home at night that's that's how it is so i'm going to do some combining here like they look okay you know you're like oh man there's a little bit of a crop there but there's just really no there's no pods on them they didn't they just died kind of like our derm aborted in the boot yeah they just kind of died so when you can see last year's durham stubble you see that white out there you guys see it yeah you see it that's last year's derm stubble so we cut last year's crop and you can see it all throughout the field over and above it's standing over and above the top growth of the lentil stand that is not a good sign so the problem is when it's this short here let's walk out there unhook my seat belt because i'm a safety first kind of guy all right so yeah there's a few grasshoppers moving around problem is here is we can only cut so short so we're cutting about right here now normally uh that's okay because the lentils are standing about twice as tall and then you're basically it'd be like cutting closer on these stems if you're going to cut here this is what happens if you're going to cut here it's a little more solid easier to cut right now this is the best part of the field how do you know because there's pots once we get up and over the hill little ways uh we had a little shower come through here this is our pride and joy you guys this is the big time this is where it's probably doing five bushels an anchor right here and we're really excited now over here is this derm there is flies out here like you would not believe and they're biters holy crap this here's our dermstable from last year if you can see between your lentil rose you do not have a good lentil crop also we have grasshopper damage they're also doing some chewing this is it this is what we're looking at here you guys so we'll have fields like this well mike how come you don't spray for your grasshoppers for what crop with what money are you gonna spray you have a couple bushel crop out here how are you gonna afford to protect that the little bit that's here doesn't even pay us to run these combines over it never mind our fuel never mind the labor the hours to use these combines is highly expensive well mike why don't you just leave it buddy why are you even out here with those expensive combines that's a really good question and the reason we're out here is because we need seed like there is no seed it's not like we can just go to the neighbor and get some seed from him for next year you know we seed this at what 1.5 2 bushels an acre what's it going zero to two bushels an acre that's our seed we have to get our seed back why why why why why you just leave it go to a seed grower buddy what seed grower in western canada is going to have a crop because the drought is so widespread you can't go to the neighbor he doesn't have a crop you can't go north to a neighbor he doesn't have a crop you can't go halfway up saskatchewan they don't have a crop you can't go to the very end of northern saskatchewan because they can't even grow lentils there you can't go to manitoba they don't have a crop you can't go to alberta they don't have a crop so where are you going to get your seed there is no seed everyone's going to be in the exact same situation and if there was a little bit of seed out there first of all it's going to go like that and second of all you're not gonna be able to afford to buy it because say this stuff is i don't know 15 bucks a bushel it's going to be 115 bucks a bushel for that seed it's going to go to the highest bidder basically whoever has the deepest pockets is going to get the seed it's going to be awesome for the sea grower anyone who has any seeds it's going to be like winning the lottery but for the average farmer you have to get your own seed back so you can plant a crop for next year so that's what we got to do that's why we got to do it now you know so it's going about two bushels an acre of lentils and probably about 2.5 bushels of grasshoppers no but in all honesty the fent ideal combines like their they got their struggles reliability is their number one struggle but when they're actually working and stay running they do an awesome job because we've been comparing the sample of the ideal combine to the john deere combines we do have some aftermarket concaves and one of them and we have the regular john deere concaves in the other and there is no difference we just can't get the sample it's clean as the ideal so that's a pro obviously we're not working the combine so we're not really burning very much fuel though though still the ideals have a little less fuel burn than the john deere's uh day-to-day hour per hour oh i'm talking about headers though yeah so on the honeybees we have a gigantic transition plate this this here is called your transition plate okay basically it's actually quite large it's quite long here let's see if i can figure this out there if you guys can see that angle it's actually pretty deep okay goes all the way down here it's almost like 18 inches or something that gives you a lot of travel all right so that's really good in terms of travel this this adder has a heck of a lot of flex if you want to use it um another big pro with this transition plate no rocks are getting past this plate like because you got fingers unless you have a really big rock and it can somehow drag it up this transition plate onto your canvas you're not going to get a rock in there so most your rocks stop at that transition plate unlike the john deere's they don't have something like that you have about a lip about this big so it doesn't take very much for a rock to dribble into even the new 745 hydroflex header now the downside to the honeybee transition plate it's a love hate relationship mike what do you mean it's a great question well it's great for keeping the rocks out it's great for flex and travel but you're going to have more header loss and a really really short crop why because it's just going to sit on your cutter bar like that and of course your knife you're going to get so it's shaking it and you don't have enough material because you need material to build up or flow because you got to have flow well the problem is there's no crop to have flow so the deer header is going to have less header loss so like i said everything has its pros and cons that is what we have noticed so far and we're only day two into harvest let's just do a little quick walk around shall we this is the ideal nine combine it is rocking the i think it's the 15 liter 15 2 maybe i can't remember something like that man engine it does unload at about six point something or six bushels per second which is pretty awesome yes i did extend that auger for a larger header that thing is just it's ridiculous it's like 30 feet or 37 feet long or something like that it's pretty long ago it does rock the 485 bushel hopper and these are 50 foot honeybee airflexes which we are on our third season with them so far they've been pretty good we've had some real issues we've lost some reels it comes flying off i do believe we got that resolved with some grade 8 bolts i'll show you the header trap wait what mike what's the header trap also known as the pre-rock trap if i can find it right here there it is so all your rocks and your dirt anything that you don't want in your combine typically always stops here first i get hold on i gotta get in which is pretty awesome lots of times you'll be combining along and you can actually see a rock just sitting in here so yes combines do have rock traps yes they should be dumped very often when you're impulses but this is your pre-rock trap also should be dumped quite often it's always a bit of a dusty job just an over-centering latch this will actually collect a lot of rocks all right guys i think that's pretty much all of it yes we had to put light bars on because we just weren't happy with the lights they are all led and they are pretty bright but um they would light your combine up awesome all the way around to about that point you couldn't see far out and when you're moving down the road at 20 mile an hour a night with a 50-foot header you need to see all the way out there and the problem is is they put their bright headlights probably because they're built in europe down here these are the brights you guys those are your headlights these up here are your floodlights well when your headers move all the way up like this it actually these are completely worthless useless you guys just put some tape over those lights they're completely useless to you when you're moving down the road so we needed to actually put some light bars on so when our headers way up to here we can actually see where we're going no we do not unhook our header great question why because we don't need to there's nobody down here it's wide open for as far as you can see and all it is is little dirt roads like that with nothing you pick up that header you rockered at 23 mile an hour if you can get the combine going that fast actually i think they do 26 and you get chomping no time to be unhooking your headers mike aren't you going to meet somebody who if you meet anybody they're probably part of our crew all right guys i'm gonna go sit down yeah my cab's a little messy right now it's because i've been in and out an awful lot these days i was actually going to say something which i thought was really important but apparently it's not that important because i forgot about it all right adios amigos so yeah i'm back i just wanted to show you guys what really poor lentils look like so let's just jump out here so guys um these lentils are a lot thinner yet even and in fact all you see is our last year's durham stubble this is our durham stubble here from last year okay you shouldn't be able to see this that is not a good sign so these lentils are doing around one one bushel an acre some of it's doing about one five 1.5 some other combines going over there so this is it guys this is even the kosher had to abort this and that's saying something because that stuff it just doesn't die i keep saying we got to breed this uh our lentils with kosher so that's our crop you're looking at it so we got a few pods right here on the top some have something in it but some don't like these don't they don't have anything in them these obviously didn't even pot at all so we got four pods over here nothing but dust in them so just because there's pods hanging on them you're like oh man mike there's there's some pods there buddy uh half of them or more are actually empty so yeah so obviously this is i haven't seen a crop this bad since 2018 but i do believe i think we cut something like five bushel lentils and five bushel lentils in 2018 this year i hope that we can get our seed back so we need to at least average 1.5 to 2 bushels so this is by far uh the worst lentil yield and drought that i've seen um 2018 was bad it was real real bad and obviously 2017 was bad before it but not like this year so but you know what us farmers any farmer you talk to we're always next to your country we're always next to your country you know next year is going to be a great year i know i said that before but next year is going to be a freaking awesome year and if it isn't then the next year is going to be an awesome year because you have to stay positive because if you don't stay positive then you definitely wouldn't make it as a farmer and obviously when you're trying to cut the tops of the lentils off like we're literally trying to cut these tops of the lentils off makes it really hard and you have to really look to know what we've cut to what we haven't cut in fact in fact in some places especially at night you actually can't see it all you cannot tell there is some places out here you cannot tell what is being cut thank goodness for gps and mapping never thought that i would actually have to use my mapping on the combine because i don't know what has been cut for what hasn't been cut so we got some more combines rolling in so let's get back at her you guys have yourself an awesome one talk to you later

Channel: Mike Mitchell

Views: 194,961

Keywords: Mike, Mike Mitchell, Faith Hope Farms, Saskatchewan, Canada, Farming, Harvest 2021, Fendt, Fendt combine, Fendt Ideal combine, Fendt Ideal 9, Honeybee header, Honeybee 50ft, John Deere S690

Id: NQaqMZl9K1M

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021