Thursday morning things were cold and grumpy getting started.
We got the dryer augers down and moved around a bit in the morning.
And yet another John Deere by a fuel barrel
The field we were going to first today was through the river and through the woods and a few narrow gates so we put the head on the header trailer to get it up there.
I brought three wagons up there to get started.
Whaoo Hoo dumping corn !!
My mom took a picture of me taking a picture of the combine and send it to me
Every once in a while a picture turns out better than expected. I like this one
Hauling corn on the snowy roads is always a little nerve racking but it went smoothly all day.
I forgot to brush the snow out of the wagons before filling them with corn and it didn't want to come out of the wagon !!
Since this corn was going to be fed to the cattle we opened up the concaves a little to allow more cob and trash in the corn to give them more to chew on.
It was sub 20F and although there was snow on the corn it was cold enough that it didn't cause any trouble.
Running through a sea of corn.
Om nom nom this thing just eats corn !!
The ground is frozen and can support the wagons in the field without issue so we decided to do some unloading on the go. It speeds things up quite a bit.
These deer decided to go running across our frozen lake and somehow made it without breaking through.
We moved augers around and put the corn right in the bin as it was dry enough.
We're going to be selling some corn straw to a neighbor and I chopped it for him. It got a little late but all is well as it's going to rain Sunday and it'll probably all freeze to the ground after that.
Today had a good start to it and had an abrupt stop.
Dad is checking out what all got damaged.
Well look at that. The rear axle is broken. WTF.
Gobs of damage ....
There was only about 30bu of corn in the hopper when it broke but no need to have extra weight in the hopper so out it goes !!
And of course it had to happen on a 25 degree slope !!!
We got to work lifting it back up. The frame was laying on the ground and was a ****** to get moving back up. We picked up a pair of low profile bottle jacks and the job got easier.
Here is the break. Looks to be a stress fracture. Seems the turnbuckles that are suppose to take the brunt of the force of the 4wd system are not adjusted properly and the center of the axle was flexing and it finally gave way.
As we kept jacking it kept getting closer to being back together.
We used a high lift jack, a floor jack, a ratchet strap and three 20 ton bottle jacks to get it back in place.
Almost looks normal again !!
We used a ton of 6x6 blocks to support it in the center as well as leaving the bottle jacks in place to help stabilize things. Monday morning we'll have a local welding guy come with his mobile welding rig burn it back together and reinforce it enough to at least get back home.
In good news the new window for the skiddy is in and looks nice and clean !!!
I ordered a pair of gas cans and have to say they are very impressive. Very.
I also ordered six of these D-Rings to put in the floor of the shop to be used for whatever. I'll be building boxes for them to be enclosed in concrete to be used as anchor points.
