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Rolla, ND | The words peas and swathing in the same sentence brings back memorizes of pry bars and getting a 1460 unplugged down to a fine art. I was harvesting for a fellow as he was finishing college and he had swathed the peas and the wind rolled them into haystacks. I'd edge up slowly and suddenly an entire haystack would fly into the combine. Drive home, drop cylinder as far as possible, get in with a 10 foot bar, move, pull, move, pull. Get it so it could turn, turn on combine and spit it out. Screw cylinder back up to the right place. Clean raspberry patch off, go back to field.
Broke the piece of tin holding the adjustment screw for the combine. Did that by trying combining with the cylinder all the way down, that really plugged it, couldn't move the concave down to loosen the plug, thought about driving it back out in the field and starting it on fire. Decided just to spend a few hours pulling out one little piece at a time with a plier.
Got a replacement piece off a 1480 with the knickname of "Smokie" due to it's habit of being on fire. That was better because there was a brace on the tin.
Finished peas, slugged the combine one time the rest of the fall.
I really wouldn't suggest swathing peas, though a reverser would help and I did get it so the pickup would usually plug first, I loosened the belt so it would slip when a slug came. Can't do that on most headers now.
Of course half the peas were gone even without fighting the plugging.
And that was from a wind that I wouldn't have called "bad".
It's a better deal to straight cut them, way better.
Unless you are really, really, lucky, and the wind never blows where you farm.
Marv
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Peas and swathing
