September turned out to be windy with a bit of rain here and there. From September 1 to 5, we had a good run on harvest. In the mornings we would unload the trucks from the night before, service the machines and tend to any minor issues.
Joseph, James and I would also usually get a few minutes in the morning to harvest a little bit in the garden. By the time that was all done, the grain would be dry and we would take the trucks out to the field while Gregory would start swathing ahead of us. Gregory was able to swath ahead of the two combines and then unload a truck when it was full. Every now and then, the combines would catch up to the swather while Gregory was unloading, but it wasn’t a problem as John would swath for a while and I could continue combining.
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It rained the morning of September 6 so we left the combines in the shed and went fencing instead. Gregory and I took the post-pounder truck and went around repairing the fence on the home half so we could turn the horses out. This year most of the horses were on hay all summer, so they were very happy to stretch their legs and chase the green regrowth in the wheat field and the grass in the sloughs, brush and on the native hillside.
On September 7 we had a bit of a later start but the wind helped dry out the last field of wheat. The next day we carefully and completely cleaned out the machines and the trucks and switched over to the barley.
On September 10 we moved over to the last barley field and one of the farthest fields from home. It started sprinkling after a few hours and they were calling for more rain to come, so we took the combines home to their sheds. The next day it rained a bit in the morning. It was enough to shut the combining down for the day.
Heavy dew delays harvest
From then on there was usually a pretty heavy dew in the mornings, which made an early start impossible. We finally finished the barley September 14 and a couple of days later we switched over to the oats.
We were not too far away from finishing the field when the elevator chain broke on John’s combine. It took a little longer with just one machine but I was able to finish the field. The next morning Gregory and I went out and put John’s combine back together and we moved everything over to the next field.
Later in the day my combine must have been feeling neglected because a small lump plugged the cylinder and wrecked the belt. I ended up taking the machine home so that Gregory could work on it in the yard in the daylight.
The oats were getting tough anyway, so John finished what was swathed and brought his machine home as well. The next morning it rained again so Gregory was able to spend some time with my combine and fix the timing issue which had caused the belt to fail. September 20 we were back to combining. We are very close to being finished with the 2021 harvest.
