After nearly a week of repairs to my semi tipper I finally got it back today and she's good as new and all ready to roll. In fact I've booked in up country to pick up my fertilizer tomorrow. 3 loads starting bright and early... actually it wont be bright then, the sun wont even be up. (Yes I know it'll be a bit of a shock to this lazy farmer who likes to sleep in).
This morning I finished of making up my new seeding boots. Now I have a full set of 53 (that's how many I need on the air seeder bar... that's how many tynes it has) and I recon I've even got a couple of spares. Hopefully I've counted them correctly... guess I'll find out when I go to put them on the machine. The last few I welded up today are slightly different to the others in that they are made with tubing that has a bend in it. So the top of the boot lays back off the tyne. This will be good for a few of the tynes where the hose leading down to the boot has a long reach.
I finished servicing the Tractors. Well I finished the John Deere 4440 anyway. I had to refill the grease gun. Then I greased both the John Deeres and the air seeder. I also blew out the engine air filter on the 4440 (this is all I have left to do on the 8200) and by the look of it it had been quite a while since I'd done that. A lot of dust and dirt come out of it!
So then I hooked the 4440 onto our prickle chain (shoulda taken a photo cause if ya don't know what a prickle chain is... it's way to hard to explain). Now that unit is all ready to go. Oh I also checked the tyre pressures on tractor and prickle chain and pumped up where they were a bit down... which happened to be every tyre. And now that unit is all ready to go.
I checked grain prices on the net. We still have some grain warehoused at the local storage facilities and are looking at the possibility of selling some soon. The prices are down at the moment though, and no body is really interested in buying mainly because the value of the Australian dollar is relatively high and only increasing. That means prices are decreasing as overseas buyers would have to pay more for us to get the same, but what happens is they pay the same... and we get less. Unfortunately with grain marketing and selling, there are times when you have to sell because you need the cashflow rather than holding off and selling when the prices are better.
I picked up the truck in the afternoon. Yep she was already, and me and a mate brought her home. He wanted to borrow a set of harrows from us, and I said "No problems at all... I wont be using them". We don't use harrows anymore as they're not suited to trash farming where all stubbles are retained. We haven't used them for years. The were superseded by the prickle chain, which can handle the trash, but even that doesn't get much use now that we use minimum tillage. This year I am planning to use it on our Correll wheat crops. Just a pass with it after the seeding bar to spread the herbicide we are using, so we get a good even coverage with the Logran. We found there is barley seeds in our Correll wheat seeds. Logran is a good chemical (or a chemical that can... maybe not good) prevent the barley growing, but it needs to be incorporated in the soil evenly to prevent the barley in the rows (ie planted barley) from growing.
It was then that I did all my tyre pumping up etc. because I checked all the tyres on the truck. While I was on a roll I also did both John Deere's and the prickle chain. Then Moved things out of the workshop yard ready for use. The truck got moved out front ready for me to leave with it in the morning. I plan to leave with it at around 6:30.
No comments:
Post a Comment