strawberry red - 5/18/2021 06:48

There was a lot of farmer inventiveness going on. It wasn’t so bad on the ground that hadn’t been worked but where I was there was 3 or 4 inches. The farmer I worked for did a lot of Alfalfa. He had just bought a brand new New Holland 1116 self propelled swather. We set the skid plates as high as they would go and put pea lifters on it. I don’t know how many people on here were familiar with the 1116 New Holland but they has notches on the hydro stat. Mostly cut in 2 or 3 notch. If I got to 4 I thought I was really rolling. The dust was so bad you couldn’t see the end of the header depending on the wind. Did about 450 acres it completely destroyed the cutter bar on it. I should mention that it had a precleaner on it and you had to dump that out about every 30 minutes. Then they put me on a Harobed. ( bale wagon). Super 1048 It had a cab but no AC and no radio. The swather had a cab and ac. The Harobed is a whole different story I could write about. You couldn’t get the ash out of the hay that was down and most of it eventually got burned. The good part was the next year yields were outstanding! The ash was good for the ground. You could still see strips get plowed up several years after the event. If you go out in some of the scablands I think you can still find the layer in places.