Hey You Wheat Guys!

The local dealer here has his shop boys busy going thru this old combine for me to make sure it is field ready and mechanically sound so as to go back to work. It has been parked just setting idle for years in a farmer's machine shed.

I mentioned to him this morning that for some reason the darned straw chopper is off the machine, is laying on a pallet around back of his shop and that I didn't want him to forget it when he loads the combine on the truck to deliver. What the heck is it doing off the machine anyways?

He says that it is easy to tell that I'm an irrigator and that most people hate the things and the combines will sell better if the choppers aren't mounted on those old cylinder type machines. He goes on to say that people like the old-fashioned "spreaders" better.

Since I'm not a wheat farmer, I don't understand this line of thinking. I always thought that the choppers were the best thing since sliced bread if you don't wanna save the straw.

Why don't wheat farmers like straw choppers? Takes too much power to pull 'em or what?

Allan

I have never had it happen to me on a Deere 6620 or an old M, but I know a few guys who have...

I hear ya. But wouldn't a guy see that.....'er, "the lack of" anything coming sideways out the deflectors?

Dunno, like I say, don't know wheat like you guys do; maybe that slick stuff plugs easier than corn trash and bean straw?

Allan

If you're just sawing off the heads off in wheat, I can't imagine you'd have a problem. However, I have found small grains tend to plug a lot more than corn or beans.

Oh heck. I don't think it is only just down in your area of Texas.

There are fellows all over who wouldn't know how to set a combine if their life depended on it; never mind the color of the machine.

I've never understood what the problem is for them either. It's just not that difficult of a concept to grasp even without the glitzy little grain monitor, the flashin' lights or the cutsie little buzzers and bells.

Allan

I hear that ol' Pard!

This is my fourth Gleaner and they are kinda like the red tractors. Once they are in your blood, they stay. :>)

So far, all I could find wrong with the old sweetheart is that it needs a set of walker blocks and the seat has a tear, but dealer offered to replace those items free of charge (probably felt sorry fer me). :>)

Allan

I just save him the trouble of cutting up his old iron that nobody else in his right mind wants. :>(

I'll say one thing for him tho; he sure takes good care of me. They deal with some pretty big players in that place and he treats me just as good as anyone else, even tho I only swap him my little nickels and dimes.

Allan

Tim

I dunno for sure. I think he said it came in from Sheridan Wyoming on a rotary trade.

Can't be positive 'bout that tho,

Allan