The combine and cornhead should come out of the shop today. Finally.
We finally got all the parts and installed them. The head is three seasons old and it is time to replace the stalk roll knives. We’ve run prototype Shred Select stalk rolls off and on for a few years. They’re an aftermarket retrofit replacement for OEM corn head stalk rolls. We chose to go with Shred Select and we should finish installing them today. We’re hoping for a longer lasting stalk roll that does a better job opening up the corn stalk for faster degradation and quicker re-mineralization.
The sprayer has also made a trip into the shop. It gets a full service about every other year and this is the year. I checked all the nozzle bodies, and spray tips. We changed the oil and pumped it full of grease. I’m going to install new strainers across the boom and make a modification to the location of the main strainer so it doesn’t have to do as much work. (Hopefully, I won’t have to clean it as often.) The plan is to put the floater tires on and get it out of the shop. I’d like to move to individual nozzle control and eventually See & Spray, but that won’t fit in the budget with the current ag outlook.
Delivering corn
The semi-trucks and trailers I talked about last week are all out of the shop and ready to go in in service. We’ve got a little bit of corn to haul in February. If it warms up next week we’ll take some soybeans out as well. Grain prices are slowly recovering after last month’s report.
We’ve still got the daunting task of re-blading the vertical tillage tool on the list. Nobody is looking forward to that, but it is going to cost about 10 to 15% less than they wanted to trade to a new one last year. The most important winter task is still to do: inspecting the planters.