February 2nd 2010 This is going to be an exceptionally busy week on the farm. We're back into combining corn full swing but also have to ship 500 tonnes of dry corn out this week. This means we are short the 90 tonne over head for wet corn storage which will be a pretty big bottle neck in the system. Also we only have the one shipping/receiving leg, so it will be double booked. With our own semi, we can have our 3 loads delivered by about 1:30pm so from starting to then we are short one guy. We've never shipped dry corn out and harvested wet corn at the same time so it will be a learning experience. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4th 2010 It looks some creativity to keep the wet corn flowing and still get enough dry corn up to fill the next truck each time but once we got the hang of it the task proved to be less daunting that originally predicted. This week has been going great, probably the best harvesting weather we'd had all fall. It is strange to say but we probably should have left out more corn to harvest at this time, but as they say hindsight is 20:20. By the end of today we should be down to the last 70ac field. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 5th 2010 As the last field happens to be our furthest away farm we were going to be short on hauling tractors. If it weren't so icy we could use the truck but there is a very narrow bridge that is inclined in such away that it was too risky to maneuver the long end dump in and out. So we hired Zollinger Custom Farming to help us out. They brought their brand new T7070 autocommand and hopper bottom trailer. Even with the 23km haul one way with the 4 tractors the combine never had to wait more than 10 minutes between sets of wagons. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 6th 2010 DONE!!! Yahoooooo. Finished up around noon and by 2 everything was put away in the sheds. Can't say I was too unhappy to see the 2009 cropping season come to an end. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 8th 2010 Time to get some of the projects that were planned for this winter started and catch up for lost time harvesting. Dropped the end dump and hooked up the float to move the cx210 to a farm where some drainage ditches needed some attention. Job is to clear off all the brush that is overhanging the field so the ditch can be dredged when the snow melts. Also while at that farm I had to push back the manure in the lagoon. Ordinarily it freezes hard enough to drive a loader tractor on and push back the fresh soft manure, but this year for some reason that never happened so the excavator was a safer option. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 17th 2010 Back from Louisville to nice and warm Canada. Oddly enough there is less snow here and the daily highs are warmer than it was in Kentucky! Back to the ditch clearing job in between shipping corn. Slowly the bins are getting empty. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------