At midnight there was a 30% chance of rain. This morning there were grain bins in the middle of fields. These are a few pictures one of my coworkers sent me.

Corn went from waist high to ankle high and roads are washed out everywhere.

Luckily we are going to probably be alright our farm secretary just got off the phone with insurance and we should be covered for most of it.

Damn so this year’s crop is almost entirely destroyed?

Yeah we got wasted. There is a 20 mile wide strip of ground that got devastated and a lot of our fields are right in the middle of it.

My boss sent me a snapchat of one of our wheat fields and said 2k18 harvest is in the books. It looks like someone took a lawnmower to it.

Damn that sucks. Is there still work to be done on the farm for you?

@Zyzz yeah there's a possibility that we can replant some and they can still use me as a mechanic but I'm guessing I'm going to get my hours cut back.

@Der Seeteufel - SD are you serious? That’s it?

@Deleted User yeah. We have a hand who has been doing this for 40 years and he said he's never seen it this bad. We still have some fields to harvest but it's bad.

So sorry man.

This field...

Looked like this field yesterday.

This used to be a wheat field.

This is a different corn field.

Definitely won't be any women in this wheat field anytime soon.

Ooosh

No words bruh

I'd post more pictures but it's just more of the same for miles and miles.

😢

The other day I found some wild wheat growing on the side of a trail

*urge to cultivate*

@ThisIsChris You should go back in a couple of weeks and check that wheat. If it appeals to you, you could probably harvest that and cultivate a small patch of your own. Obviously you wouldn't be able to do much with it but after a year you might be able to get a loaf of bread. It would be a pretty cool hobby project.

We got a new rotor for one of our combine headers. Probably won't get much use this year but at least I still have stuff to do. Installing this thing is going to take a lot of work.

We're replacing the conveyor belts.

We actually don't have the bands that link the ends of the conveyor belts. So this project is on hold for the time being so I went up on the scissor lift to get a couple more pictures.

@Der Seeteufel - SD that sounds like a great hobby project. We were driving through some corn fields today, it was compelling

I just got done pulling the plates out of a 24 row corn planter only to have the 36 row planter pull into the shop.

It's a good thing I'm not afraid of heights.

Harvest has begun

@Der Seeteufel - SD how’s the arm?

It's good. I've got full use of it as long as I don't bump into anything.

Combining with the wind. It gets a little dusty

Getting ready to move on to the next field driving down the highway with this header should be fun.

I love my job!

Another great sunset.

I went and put the header down on the bumblebee. It was triggering my autism worse than the John Deeres being out of order.

#4 is almost ready to go.

Saw this and thought of you @Der Seeteufel - SD https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eicqRLGfFw0

@Grossly Incandescent it's pretty much exactly like that.

I’m guessing that field must be very dry for that 18 wheeler to not get stuck.

It's dry there that's why that grain cart has such big tires though. That's what goes out in the field with the combines so we can dump on the move.

What brand tires do y'all buy for your agricultural equipment?

Pretty much what ever is cheapest or comes with the equipment.

The tractor I'm in right now has Michelin.

Do you see any significant variations in tire performance between brands or models when you replace them? Like how long they last, their resistance to punctures, their level of grip in soggy conditions, etc?

I haven't been around long enough yet but I'd say it probably isn't that noticeable. According to my boss some different brands are literally produced in the same factory and just get a different name stamped on the side. They are internally identical.

Double jump start. Don't try this at home.

You all don’t want me to sperg out on tires. There are many differences in the brands. The type of work Andrews equipment is in doesn’t effect them very much but in many conditions they do.

So we had a hydraulic rupture on the mower tractor.

Luckily we have bigger tractors.

We probably didn't need to go that big it's just the one we had in the yard. That's why we needed the jump start.

The trials of being a farmer. When your stuff is broken you need to fix your other equipment to get it going again.

@JesseJames I do want you to sperg out about tires. I’m a gearhead, I started a new job that works regularly with tires, and I enjoy sperging out on things.

In the limestone mine field tires are a huge expense to my clients. I track every out that tire runs and can tell my customers how much they are paying per hour to run those tires. There is a lot of technology that goes into quarry tires and each brand has specific quarry branded lines of tires. My other customer base is the excavating field. Those are tracked in the same manner but usually they do not run as long because of the conditions they are ran in. I have a good diagram with examples of each style and how they’re constructed.

We run in pretty soft soil. Our tires can last quite a long time. Antlers do the most damage to them.

Highways are also hard on our tires.

We probably put more wear on the tires moving from one field to another than we do actually working the field.

@JesseJames can you post that diagram? I'd like to see it.

Ya I am on vacation at the moment. When I get back to work I will get it up.

Too bad most our corn got hailed out. This is one of the survivors. I'm 5'11" for reference

I drove across SD a few months ago, fields as far as the eye can see

Can y'all share short videos? When I see that picture of chickens, I want to hear them all clucking, haha. And walking about all goofy, with that head thrusting.

Wheatland tube

I used to build these now I tear them out. Building them was easier.

Here's the new one installed. It's a different model than the kind we pulled out.

Wind farming!

Good night IE. I'm getting your wheaties ready for breakfast tomorrow.

It's getting pretty dark out here. Thank God for auto steer.

Done for tonight.

Pros and cons of being a farmer.

Con: working a 15 hour day.

Pro: Free beer!

Alright now to get into the informative portion of this content.

This screen is probably the most important in the combine harvester.

The top two indicators are what is going on with your crop. The left is moisture percentage and the right is bushels per acre. Just below that is your crop. In this case it is a lie (we're actually harvesting winter wheat) but it's close enough.

In this type of combine the majority of the threshing is done by a device called a bullet rotor. The top left indication below the crop type is the speed of your rotor. The number below that is the clearance between your rotor and concave. In this case it's 0 because we want it as close as it gets.

Next to your rotor speed is the cleaning fan speed. The cleaning fan blows light weight unwanted chaff out of the mechanism.