now i just finished my south row again and i'm going to oh looks like dump in Darcy,
Steve Wahl is full and gone do you want me to dump in Darcy yeah I don't think you can
get two rounds Kate
yeah i'm not sure if i can get two rounds Darcy's not here though he's in the combine
and he's not here to help direct me on where to back up but that's okay put my radio back
i lined up i think in the middle there pretty well and Darcy's truck doesn't have the double
bunks in the back so i'm able to clear it with the auger but i won't i'll just put my
auger back anyway and head on my way is this pass kind of up here my next one yeah whatever
end one you want to be on Kate
so i should have taken this one down then i didn't realize that we have another harvest
crew next to us so that truck was not for us um but they're running red combines which
are Case my family are definitely John Deere people that's all we can say they're reliable
we know they're going to run and just throughout all of the generations we've had on our farm
which i'm fourth we've had John Deere primarily it's nice to have our three combines going
now if you've noticed we don't have a grain cart and i forgot to mention why now if you
remember from last year's harvest videos at the very end of harvest our grain cart broke
down a boat broke or something happened to it and it is still not fixed so the people
who were fixing it and ended up not ordering the parts so we are not able to use it yet
hopefully we'll be back soon but we actually don't have an employee to drive the grain
cart right now i'm loving my Kate's Ag t-shirt and i'm so happy that this has finally turned
into a reality it is just the coolest thing ever my dad also loves wearing them this roller
control is able to change my belt speed which is the belt that has the little teeth on it
is what i call the more pointy things that pick up the wheat swath and bring it in you
want that going faster than your combine so that it's able to bring the weed in at a good
pace um so this controls that i'm pretty sure let's see i do have header tilt when i we
put the big 40-foot headers on them so that's up here left to right one of these is real
speed this might be real speed and then this might be not sure what this one is but i'll
find out by the end of harvest i just have completely forgot or maybe i should go back
and watch um one of my old videos where i describe the panel here and what everything
does because even i forget sometimes this field is fairly flat there is occasionally
equilibrium which is just a draw on the field that's fairly simple to get your header up
and down in i really love running combines so i'm happy to run it in whatever sort of
field whether it's hilly a side hill very deep i'm just so thrilled to be in the combine
it doesn't matter to me oh birds oh my goodness so many of them that's so cute they flew away
though so i'm going through the dip in the field usually it would slow down but i remember
this dip from the last three times i've done a pass around here so that went pretty smoothly
oh no there was a little bird still left in there but he got out it's totally okay i slow
down and stop if i need to because the wheat is a very nice home for the wildlife so you
have to make sure to watch out for that as a combine driver so it's not just about operating
the machine and making sure you're as efficient as possible for your operation and your farm
you're also trying to maintain the environment and make sure that little animals are not
hurt during the process and animals are my favorite part of harvest to see out in the
field there's nothing like sitting in your big combine in the middle of nowhere following
a wheat swath driving three miles an hour there's absolutely nothing like it and Montana
sunsets are also gorgeous so i hope we get a beautiful one tonight so now i'm picking
up my header and doing a left turn it's always left turns normally to line up to my next
row although my dad thinks i do do my turns too fast and treat the combines like go-carts
which i enjoy corners because they're so much fun but i guess i should go a little slower
and easier on the combine and then i just have this short pass headed from west to east
and then i'll do another turn left turn and i'll be headed south another left turn take
the pass headed west and then all back track and dump in the truck the wheat was a little
bit thicker there because it was a coulee so i just slowed down a bit so now i've just
finished this row you clean up the tail pick the header up not fully up because then it's
tough on it it needs to have some float room to move up and down and there's no need to
even pick it up to as high as when you wrote it because you're just going to set it back
down like i am right now and then go to your cruising speed normally you would set it down
at a slower speed and gently increase the speed but i set it down at a faster speed
and had to decrease the speed so i do need to work on that but as long as you're watching
and being careful and not overloading the combine you're good i set it down at about
3.3 miles per hour and i'm going 3.1 right now so that's not that big of a difference
you know you can't set it down at 7 miles per hour though i don't actually even know
if this combine will go seven miles per hour in second gear it might um i'm getting about
11 bushels per acre so not very good at all but a little bit better than those end passes
that i was doing earlier and yesterday where dad and Darcy are that's the one in front
i believe those are hawks in the field right there i'm not completely sure because i can't
fully see them yeah looks like a hawk two hawks actually there's a lot of hawks in this
field actually there's one over there too and i think there's three more over there
as well i'm counting five hawks over here wow so my dad is right there and Darcy is
over here but i was wrong about which combine my dad was he was the one right behind me
right there he's going to dump next two laps and then there's Darcy he just told me we're
able to make it two laps now because we're almost at the end of this field i am now starting
a pass headed east and my dad's in the combine right here we are just finishing up this little
part of the field so this will be done with 160 acres we move to the next 160 the trucks
will come over here and then we'll be done with the 320 acres we have here dad and Darcy
couldn't figure out whether these two rows here were supposed to be picked up south or
north it's really hard to tell which direction the swath is going sometimes um but they're
both rows headed to the south we filled up Darcy's truck but Darcy's just going to fill
up his combine before he takes it in and hopefully Steve Wahl will be back by then i have seen
quite a few grasshoppers actually when i was out at lunch and just walking through the
field so they are here this year i just haven't seen as many from the combine cab i'm gonna
try and wave at my dad but he's not paying any attention i have actually seen one feather
in the swath but it was when my dad was driving and kind of we were trying to set the tank
and i saw it too late to stop but i'm sure i'll see another one oh wait we just are finishing
this half of the 160 there's still maybe the other part over there yes that's what it looks
like so maybe i was wrong we're not quite done with this 160 yet but with three combines
it goes fairly fast so we should be done pretty soon i would say i maybe have a quarter tank
right now of grain so i'll be able to go quite a bit longer hopefully our harvest days usually
begin at 8 a.m and around 10 p.m it gets dark at 9 40 around there so we want to have everything
parked when it's dark and then just take people back to their vehicles because as my uncle
Chris said in our swathing video you spend your days fixing the things that broke at
night so it's just not worth it and it's also important that your crew gets a good rest
and are fully capable of running combine the next morning because when you are overworked
it's really challenging to run this heavy machinery and safety is our utmost priority
above everything else my return auger is getting almost full so i'll slow down i was at three
seven i'll slow down to three five three four let's see what i'm getting four bushels per
acre it says 16 right here it looks like the other harvest crew is doing pretty well over
there i see trucks going in and out so that means they're harvesting something which is
always good my dad said we're not doing a very good job lining up to the truck to dump
the wheat in and he's so right i had to back up one of the times and then realign myself
just because i was too far away and then sometimes i'm too close so you never know what to do
and then my dad's taking this road headed south right next to me i'll pick up this little
side row and then we'll move over to the other half of this field looks like a case tractor
on their train cart too i've been waving all the trucks passing by because it just makes
my day happier and a little brighter and i hope it makes their day happier too you feel
a little bit more connected to all of the farmers in the other fields harvesting their
crops as well now i'm just looking at my row to see that i picked up the wheat well we
have on the back of the combines what's called straw choppers and they basically take all
of the straw that goes into the combine the combine only takes the grain which is in the
head of the wheat and puts it in the tank and the rest has to go out the back so all
of the straw is either goes straight out the back and lays into back into rows which is
really tough because then you don't know which are straw rows and which are wheat rows or
you can have it chopped up and it'll just go back into the field as compost it doesn't
really add a lot to the soil but if you leave the straw choppers off and have rows of straw
you have to bail it or you have to burn it we're not baling straw this year because we
want to make sure our stubble doesn't get driven on that much and it stays tall to hold
in the moisture and also keep the dirt from blowing so we've decided to put the straw
choppers on this year last year if you remember we did leave the straw and had people bail
it and i actually drove a baler which was really fun so i'm now starting my next row
oh maybe that was 160 right there i don't know actually my moisture reader is not working
so it just says 0.0 percent moisture my dad's is though my fans running 820 and it says
six bushels per acre here now my dad just finished his last pass and he's headed over
to this part of the field and Darcy is just making his turn to start the row headed east
my grain tank buzzer just went off so i'm making a very slow corner my window is full
now that i've gone downhill so i may have enough space to make it back and i might not
so we'll see because now it's going to push it back down oh i don't know my window's almost
full my window was only like half full but then i went down that hill and it's now all
the way full so i guess we'll see how much more i can take how full do i look Darcy
at the top of your window there oh so i'm probably good for this pass that's kind of
what i was thinking thank you yeah so i'm good i have a tiny bit of window space left
so i do keep getting this buzzer though it's not like my 9610 that the buzzer would be
super continuous and so annoying it only buzzes a couple of times so that's a lot nicer but
there's hardly any wheat in this swath so i should be good and now that all the combines
are full we're going to have to wait for Steve Wahl to come back because we've also filled
our semi i think i might be bringing a smaller tandem truck out to the field my dad was saying
which would be so cool i'd never really driven truck by myself before so i would enjoy that
there's nothing here this is kind of like a water hole so i'm not sure that in good
use anything grows here it may just have different soil composition i'm not completely sure there's
no alkali or anything in this field my dad is plumb full so he's been waiting well Darcy
and i have been doing a couple more rounds Darcy has a little bit of room left so he's
doing another south pass i nearly have a full window so i'm just going to stop after the
end of this pass i mean i have this much space left in my window so i'll be good to finish
this because the amount of wheat we're getting is not very much 16 bushels an acre it looks
like no three five bushels an acre i read that incorrectly i pressed the wrong screen
i don't know what number that was but six bushels per acre it says between six and seven
coming up to the end of my row here and then i'll just stop probably i'll drive over here
and turn around to where my dad is and stop facing the same way he is just so if we move
the combines anywhere or anything they're all together and then i can wave to them out
my window do you want me to just line up next to you now i'm not sure where my dad's going
he's moving so i just shut the back of the machine off i had shut the header off a minute
or so before i just parked next to my dad right here i think you could have pulled another
end past me yeah Darcy how do you enjoy being a combine driver now and how does it compare
to truck driving and driving tractors really yeah it does a different so you like it oh
yeah i like everything that's awesome well i enjoy having you as a combine driver sitting
in the truck yes we've got a fun combine crew found a rock dad we'll look at it on that
clean yeah it's beautiful that's you going i'm going about three four that's about how
fast i'm going between three two and three five so far so good no big wrecks yet yes
so that's always a good thing Darcy
dad and i are all waiting in our combine for Steve Wahl to come wall's just coming down
the road so my dad's starting to move a little bit i'll raise my header up and darcy's going
to move as well dad is dumping in Steve's Wahl's right now and then i think i'll go
next and then Darcy because Darcy holds the most grain so he usually starts at the last
okay so position i'm about to dump in Steve Wahl oh i got a line up well i have another
guy coming out tomorrow to drive combines you have to teach him how they work
i guess i'm dumping at the back of the truck first because my dad filled up the front
thank you do you want to drive no up and then back to the front again put the half or two
there you go now straight now is that too much a little bit
ahead and try it there if it looks like it's shooting over yeah yeah that's perfect there
you'll probably be shooting over when you pull ahead but you continue idle down uh yes
so if you idle down it'll actually it won't shoot it so far out oh really i didn't know
that that's what i usually do when i top off i just item it down and then then i don't
shoot it so far and so hard so idle down now oh you're okay thank you for helping i really
appreciate it yeah anytime you think you're too close just idle down a little bit a little
more and it'll keep it from forcing it off the other side yes that makes sense all right
thank you Kate thank you very much that was very nice of Steve Wahl to come in the combine
and help thank you so much for watching today's video i really hope you enjoyed and learned
a little bit more about how your food gets to your table and the process it takes to
get it there make sure to like and subscribe you can visit Kate's Ag instagram k-a-t-e-s
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a Kate's Ag tote bag also made in the U.S.A. thank you so much for watching bye