Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I have often witnesses this same thing with small and big time neighboring operations. We have an 8 row head and a 650 bu grain cart. We are fortunate in that our fields are all rectangles but one. This helps a lot.
I harvest in lands and once I have broken through, the cart can run beside me on the return pass although it is tight. After that it is not a problem. On our fields the cart drives about 7/8 of the way to the far end and turns around. We unload on the go heading toward the truck end until the combine hopper is empty. I engage the unloading auger again as I get close to the truck end so that my hopper is empty when I get to the end. He then pulls away to the truck and I start my journey back. Since most of our fields are close this allows three and a half of us to harvest. There's me, the cart driver and the trucker. The half guy is another guy that is doing livestock chores in between keeping an eye on the unloading operation.
If the length of the field or corn is so good that I can't make it to the far end on the initial breakthrough pass I do the following. I strike through and watch the grain tank. At the point where the tank is getting fairly full, I stop and back up quite a distance. The grain cart has followed me but stayed back quite a ways. I then weasel my way into the next set of rows. After I get fully weaseled on to the new set there are 16 harvested rows which allows a large enough space for the cart to pull up alongside me. We then both stop and I unload standing still for the first hopper. When empty, I continue toward the far end on the second set of eight that I had weaseled over on. The cart pulls over and follows me to the far end. For my return pass I skip 8 rows and come back on that set. The cart follows me on those 8 rows and swings over once we get back to the split off point. On the next pass away from the truck when I get to the split off point, I back up to harvest the "stubs" from the initial pass. At that point, there are 24 rows harvested and we have plenty of room to work. |
Grain tank full on the far end of the field
