Loading sunflowers.

I was about to say “hop on Farmers Only or Christian Mingle, you can easily find a girl from the next town over” but,

>She's very conservative, literally never worn pants.

Ooh, that gave me a tingle. Love me some ladies in dresses, way too rare these days. So feminine and wholesome.

But still, you can find ones near you that will have a much higher return on investment.

I have a date Sunday with a girl on eHarmony whose profile pic is in a dress and is an open conservative. Multiple women on Christian Mingle say in their profile that they’re homeschooled and greatest goal is to be a good mother.

Edit: just read the rest and ... wow. Keep us informed.

@Tanner - SC it's kind of a unique situation. I love her and honestly I'd marry her in a heartbeat, but she is only 19 and not ready to move away from home yet. My church is also super conservative German Lutheran and ever since I have become more involved in the church the more important finding a wife who shares my religious beliefs has become. Even during IEs conference I would probably have called myself borderline agnostic but I prayed for a wife and the next day my pastor sent me an email. Honestly I don't know if there's any coming back from this point.

>Maybe go to Australia during the winter

I would go earlier. Go meet her family, win them over. You’ll learn more about her. They might help encourage her into your arms, they might decide to move to America to facilitate their 2 daughters’ relationships. But 6 months without her is too long.

Sounds like a great situation.

Crawling around inside a combine.

Pulled all this junk out.

Finally got to drive this thing further than from one end of the field to the other. It rides a little rougher over the road but kicking it up to 20mph is pretty fun.

Moved a couple of other big ol girls this morning.

I really want to get a line up of all our big tractors, but they are never all in the same place at once.

Each one of these tractors costs more than my house and we have 3 more 9380s and a few other old tractors that aren't really in use anymore.

This is a 9380.

talk about mechanized farming

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/farmers-are-killing-themselves-in-staggering-numbers/ar-AAzbcCN?ocid=spartanntp

Keep your heads up boys.

I'm ok. I can see why this is a problem though. It probably isn't the incomes though it's addiction mostly to alcohol and gambling. Farmers tend to be risk takers and that often puts them into positions where they can lose everything in a very short amount of time. Lots of farmers who would have been just fine otherwise lose everything to gambling. I've known people who have lost tens of thousands of dollars on video lottery. I can't even go into an Indian Casino anymore. It makes me sick.

Not to mention the financing it takes to get your implements.

Yeah but all that stuff is manageable. Banks are actually surprisingly willing to work with you (at least out here) my dad works in finance and he's said that he's never seen a farmer go broke that didn't have some other issue. Honestly the problem might be that there is too much "big money" in farming. My grandfather raised 6 sons and a daughter on a barely subsistence income and he was apparently one of the happiest guys in the world.

We're delivering some feed corn to a stock yard. This will be my first highway trip in a semi.

I'll be driving this behemoth.

Loading trucks is pretty boring so I'm just talking a bunch of pictures.

🚜

Since this server is ment to be informative I thought I show you how we know how much weight we have on the truck. This gauge measures the pressure on the air bag suspension. We're shooting for 80psi

The pup doesn't have air bags so we just look through the windows and guess.

@Der Seeteufel - SD so you all don't have any animal crops out there?

We don't do livestock on the farm I work on but there are 4.32 cows for every person in South Dakota. There are cows everywhere. This corn is going to a stock yard to feed cattle before they go to market.

That's cool. Glad you're feeding my beef, haha😁

When I was 18 I worked on the kill floor at Purnell's sausage. That was a different experience. Totally different than hunting. The Purnell's were are neighbors when I was a kid.

Do you all grow just corn, wheat and sunflowers?

Mostly. Sometimes we grow millet and a little bit of the dreaded soy.

Is that based on demand?

Yeah and weather patterns and crop rotation. It's actually pretty complicated how they decide what to plant.

We even use infrared satellite images to detect crop density and draft fertilizer profiles. We planted one field half sunflower and half peas last year and planted it all spring wheat this year. We used the satellite pictures to see we needed more fertilizer on the sunflower side of the field. We would have known that anyway but accurate fertilizer application can save us a lot of money over 1600 acres.

Make sure you wear a mask around the soy. 👗

Wow, that's crazy. Farming got real high tech. I'm so used to living my life like it's 1918, I've lost track of how far we've come😁 😂

@Asatru Artist - MD

I even wear a mask around corn.

Mostly for dust though. Its really bad inside the bins.

I actually took this selfie for a girl I'm texting, but I have a doxx proof job so I'm not that worried about posting selfies.

Dr. Andrew, S.D. 😷

Hail storm came through last night. Wiped out as much as 18,000 acres. My boss is not in a good mood today. I'm going to try and get some pictures later I think we probably won't work most of the day today.

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.

The last two indicators on the right are the top and bottom sieves. They are what sort the grain from the remaining chaff.

The bottom block is the message center. In this case it's telling me my grain tank is 3/4 full. Next to that is the record button for keeping records of what we're harvesting.

You control all of those settings with this panel.

Sorry for the crappy photo. I was driving and it's bouncy.

I'm pretty tired so I'll just close this post by saying you adjust all those settings based on crop density and moisture and by visually inspecting your grain tank and by getting out and counting the amount of grain you bypass per square foot. It sounds more complicated than it actually is. You can learn to do all of this in a day.

Remember that hail storm back in June?

That scar is 3/4 the length of the State.

South Dakota isn't exactly the size of Rhode Island either.

@Der Seeteufel - SD yikes did that harm people's farms?

Yeah it destroyed more than 15,000 acres just on the farm I work on. The reason you can see the lines is because basically everything is dead along that 420 mile swath. @ThisIsChris

@Der Seeteufel - SD I am sorry to hear about the farm you work on.

Luckily we had insurance to cover most of it. Rather than losing 5 million dollars this year my boss should break even. That's just the reality of farming. This was a once in a lifetime storm though.

Farming tire tech I learned today. This tire has big tread that grips the soil at low pressure, then if you inflate it to high pressure, only the center of the tread contacts the ground, making for good fuel efficiency and tread wear when driving on pavement.
https://www.michelin.com/eng/media-room/press-and-news/press-releases/Products-Services/Michelin-at-SIMA-2017

We actually do that with our normal tires. It probably isn't as effective as this new tire is designed to be but we do increase our tire pressure if we are going a long way down the highway.

Today, farmers in France got the gas.
https://www.sltrib.com/sports/2018/07/24/tour-de-france-marred-by/

I'm driving the grain cart today.

This cart can carry about 80,000 lbs of wheat.

I'm half full.

I think this is the last load for tonight.

Oh and if anyone is wondering what that kink in the reel on the combine is. That's what happens when you don't pay attention and hit a rock. That was from when I was driving it the other day.

Luckily I was able to hit the E stop before the combine ate it.

This is why you wear a mask when sweeping out bins. This mask was new when I started 30mins ago.

@Der Seeteufel - SD ask for a respirator, homie

The mask actually works just fine. It's relatively large particulate. I have a respirator for chemicals.

@Der Seeteufel - SD is it true that you can "drown" in a silo?

Yeah. You should never enter a bin while loading or unloading because you can be buried or sucked into the grain. You also have to be careful when entering a bin that has been partially unloaded because the top layer can crust over and form a void. You don't so much drown as get your lungs crushed by the weight of the grain but you suffocate just the same.

@Deleted User

oosh

Ouch.

@Der Seeteufel - SD I've seen a lot of guys recently wear those masks when mowing their big lawns. Glad to see people are getting wiser about PPE.

Never thought of that. Good idea. I have 2 acres to mow.... thanks

Picking up chicks? @William Russell

Dumping them at their new home. You have the best pics btw @Der Seeteufel - SD

Thanks. It's pretty easy when someone lets you use millions of dollars worth of their equipment.

I seen an illegal try to climb up the wrong side of a ladder today

We're moving on.

We all made it.

It was a lot easier driving down the highway without a forty foot header hanging off the front of my combine.

I don't know how my boss does it. I get stressed out just driving a combine on the highway as a general rule. He sends 3 million dollars of equipment 30 miles down a heavily traveled highway at dusk in the hands of guys like me and doesn't bat an eye.

I think it has something to do with people who are white Christians. I have had Asian and Indian bosses in the past and they are nervous Nelly’s. They are the antithesis of cool, calm, and collected. Even the slightest thing that goes wrong sends them into a tizzy. And then they belabor the mistake for months after. They as a group are not worthy of leadership

Generally speaking neuroticism is a poor quality to have as a leader or manager

Nice. I want one of those to pull a lawnmower out at my dad's place.

My boss was just chasing a badger around the field with his combine. It's probably the funniest thing i've ever seen. I wish I could have gotten video.

Filters BTFO!

Got some broken plastic fingers on my header.

These fingers grab the wheat and pull it into the feeder house. They ride on a bar that is offset inside the drum so they retract as they go around.

Every so often one will break off. It never seems like it's one directly in front of the access panel though.

I fixed it.

Nom Nom Nom!

Cookie Monster > Everything

I found out today that we are selling some of our sunflower seeds to Bigs. I went ahead and bought some and this is on their package.🇺🇸

I already support you then. Between myself and my son we eat a couple of big bags a piece a weekend.

Damn, bro

@JesseJames thanks man. If you keep up the habit you might even get some I planted and harvested this year. I think a couple of fields survived the hail storm. We should start harvesting them soon.

Went to move my boss's pickup this morning and I realized that I had passengers.

Lol better than finding mexicans in there @Der Seeteufel - SD

Wow @Der Seeteufel - SD took me a while to figure out what that is

I saw him circling. I'm sorry I couldn't get better pictures but I was driving.

Haha. He must have asked you to move the truck just so he could see your reaction. That’s good.

Farming in KY, corn and soyboy beans, I was on top of the barn today sealing it off from the birds haha.

Damn I love ky.

This is a 6 cylinder diesel air compressor. We use it for blowing the grain and dust out of the combines after we're done. It's probably the worst job on the farm.

Here's a picture for scale. He hasn't started yet. Once the air is on you're almost constantly surrounded by swirling clouds of dust.

I thought I'd mention that this is the appropriate PPE for running a 170 psi air wand to blow grain dust. The old man won't wear it because he's too stubborn but real Chads wear PPE.

Nice t-shirt

@Deleted User fitness is the most important PPE

My coworker lives in a town so small that he was able to get the city to shut down the water to the whole town rather than have them dig up his yard. I love rural life.

I don't get it

@John O - his street shutoff got buried due to some earlier street work and so when the city came to replace his water meter they told him they would have to dig up his lawn to shut the water off to his house. He replied, "There's no way in hell that you're digging up my lawn for a 15 min meter swap." So he got them to shut off water to the whole damn town. It was a really funny story. Maybe it doesn't translate into text very well.

Oh, got it

Taking the dogs out for a ride in the golf cart.

Getting ready to plant winter wheat.

I drive the red one

Also if you guys aren't looking for farm work, at least occasionally, you're messing up. I'm literally being paid to drink free beer right now. I told my boss I'd punch out but he said don't worry about it.

That's sick

It's not the best paying job, and it's dangerous as hell, but I love it.

Other than @Deleted User do we have any farmers? I feel like it's the quintessential European occupation. If you haven't eaten something that you've grown yourself you're messing up!

Also buy Bigs sunflower seeds. That's where these are going, probably, but anyway I'm to drunk to keep posting so I'll talk later.

I was sober when I was driving and took that picture.

@Der Seeteufel - SD good to know

@Der Seeteufel - SD I've eaten my own vgtables but from my garden, nothing like what you guys have lol. Little Rhody aint got that kinda land.

My father owns two quarters I'm planning on farming myself but that's a tiny farm around here. I'm probably going to have to share crop a lot and drive truck on the side, but I'll be dammed if I don't give my children more land than I started with.