Larson Harvesting

[637slayer]

a guy could follow behind the water truck with a gun and a 12 pack and have some fun.

I like that !!!!!!!![/QUOTE]

sure would be easy shooting, im not that cruel though, not when their just trying to get water, if i see a coyote or rabbit and i got a gun ill take a shot at them though, maybe 1ton got canned getting tired of waiting

 

[CM1995]

in all your travels your probably seeing first hand the drought conditions everyone is talking about, i know its really dry here, north east wyo, about 200 miles north of casper. were used to it this time of year in this part of wyo, if its not irrigated its brown.

I feel for you guys up there. We have had so much rain that it seems like we haven't had a day in the last month without battling mud. Two weeks ago we got 4.5 inches in an afternoon. If I could just send some of that water up North...

 

[hvy 1ton]

Thanks, KSSS. I've been around for almost 2 weeks now. I passed a white trail king tag in montana a couple times. Pickups might be larsen farms or might be us. The trucks go to the Budweiser elevator in IF so you'll probably see them around.

It's dry all over. Corn burnt up worse than last year. On the plus side, half of it didn't drowned first like last year. If I wasn't a bit of a pyro, I'd be bored f watching fires while working. The smoke is keeping the dew on late so we haven't started cutting before 9:30 the last couple days. No internet, so no pics for a while. And my phone and hef don't seem to get along too well.

I'll pass your number along. Dunno if we're looking, but if we it'll be a truck driver or cart man I think.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Slideshow put together by the big boss using pics from me, drew, him and the bossman. Back in KS and taking the weekend off after picking some pretty sad looking corn. http://www.youtube.com/#/watch?feature=plcp&v=dOtYZ--NhEk

 

[hvy 1ton]

Converted the convertible trailer to something useful again. Grain trailer was originally setup to load headers in there, but haven't done it since they switched to drapers. Pretty hard getting a 40' head in a 28' trailer.








Oh, and sketchiest loading dock ever.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Big Sky Country and the "field" that came to be known as the Rock Pile. It was more of a collection of flat spots on the side of mountain. Had some rocks in it that would be called boulders anywhere else. One such boulder bent the hell out of the center draper roller. That was 1 combine down for an hour. I went between working on the header and dumping the combine that was still running. Not 15 minutes after it was up again the boss man hit that boulders twin and tweaked the draper adapter. Had to call in a pro harvest guy

Some one handed driving/photography while dumping.

Waiting for trucks. Did this a lot in MT. That dust is one of our trucks hitting the gravel road 15 minutes after i unloaded it

More

Impeccable timing

 

[hvy 1ton]

A few pics from a rare moment when both combines were up on the Rock Pile.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Oops. Guess that was 6 pics. One more from the last set

Roading to Hilltop. This was a bad idea. No more hi speed picture taking for me.






If your picking up the military nature to these field names, it has a lot to do with the, apparently infamous, mountain men brothers were working for and the area of montana we were working in. I'll leave it at that, but will add that i wouldn't be surprised if KSSS knows who i'm talking about.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Welcome to the Hill Top

Can't cut wheat anywhere without a fire. Atleast we didn't start this one

3 hour round trip with 2 trucks and 2 combines made for a lot free time for pictures

I still don't understand how this happens, but it did and i untangled it every couple days

Surprise the fires getting bigger.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Maybe the Rain will put it out for once



The 2wd couldn't make it up the steep end of this draw. Only one thing left to do, sidehill it.

These boys are from the part of KS that has sidehill combines.

There aren't even any terraces, it can't be that steep.

 

[hvy 1ton]

I think the rain made it worse

more waiting for trucks

Yep. Definitely made it worse.

This was another one of those bad ideas. Between the hill top we were cutting and the one the trucks we could get to was crazy farm road along a creek and then crossing that involved more boulders and a lot of mud. Then there was The Hill Top road. Dirt road cut out of the side of the hill that was pretty tame except the 100' chunk that was at least a 10% grade. I had been loading half on the trucks and then following them up and loading the other half, but i really wanted a good look at the fire. It took a running start, front and rear diff locks, dropping 8 gears and some skill/luck take your pick to make it up that 100' section and then i almost forgot to turn the diff locks back off for the next corner. I blame it on a lack of adult supervision.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Waiting for trucks. This was the G rated theme for our time in montana

Maybe this rain storm will put out the fire. Statistically it has to happen at some point during the season. I mean, this is the third rainstorm of the day.

oh that's not the Hill Top, that's just a saddle.

There's a whole nother hill side to cut out.

At least this part is down hill.

 

[hvy 1ton]

I'm not going up there. I don't care if you're light is one.

I all ready got in one fight with a hill today and the wash doesn't look like any fun



I can't remember why he cut that out the way he did, but he wanted to see how bad that wash was before he fully commited.

 

[hvy 1ton]

I know you guys want to see more fire pics. First time I've seen a water bomber. Pretty hard to catch from that far without any tele lens. Did a bit of croping just to prove theres one in these pics. The spotter plane is even harder to see. Speaking of hard to see. The bomber had a pretty hard time seeing it to. I was waiting for combines so i could do my thing and watching them fly around wondering how they can see each other when i can't see either one of them. Next thing i know the smoke shifts a little and i see both them headed right at one on another. The spotter plane preformed what i can only call evasive maneuvers with what from my perspective looked like inches to spare, but from my limited interaction with pilots, when a planes wings are in a vertical position ungood things are happening. Of course the other two guys were busy cutting wheat so this is a bit of an unconfirmed story.

 

[hvy 1ton]

More waiting for trucks. Good news is it isn't a 120 degrees and we've got some entertainment.

Obligatory Sunset farming shots.

this one was my desktop for awhile

Sunset on the hills, that are still sorta on fire. Try cleaning up turn rows and other misc chunks of wheat. We do get paid to cut the whole thing.

Everything looks cooler with lights.

Awful lot of pics for one day i know, but it was busy/exciting day and i had a lot of free time on my hands and so did everybody else but the truckers. My trusty sidekick Trey even made a video of the haul road/crazy creek road, but it's not PG and i'm a bit hesitant to post it. With that it's way past my bedtime see ya'll bright and early.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Back at it again. This time in Blackwell, OK. Wheat in Altus and Ashland was all zeroed out by insurance. Several Bridges being worked on and no one on our 4 man skeleton crew having been this way before resulted in a lot of down town sight seeing and a very roundabout route to our target, the elevator in Billings, OK. You know it bad when you leave from northern kansas, drive around on all four sides of your destination, and pull into town from the south.

After checking the settings on the 2 combines we brought down, we headed for the first field. I start roading mine to the field with another big guy in the buddy seat. And the A/C is doing nothing. Before we even make it 2 blocks we have the doors open and sweating something fierce. I mess around with it, resort to the telephone book sized manual, and proceed to call professional reinforcements, 2 hours out. Well the bossman isn't gonna let a combine sit for 2 hours when there's wheat to cut and a storm rolling in. And since combines are more something i work on than work he's gonna ride with me so i can't really balk at no A/C. To make things more interesting the seals for the reel in/out blew while he was hooking up the head, so the reel is all the way back in transport position. And then there was the vineweed. Never heard of it before yesterday, but it makes for some nasty combining. With reel only mildly functional, i was picking up a lot of vineweed to keep the wheat feeding onto the drapers. Spent most of my time trying not to plug the rotor and the engine hit 120% load more times than i really like to admit. If i'd been running a 7088 i'd still be out there digging out the rotor. After what felt like 5 hours, he took pity on me and sent me off to get the trucks. I would have gotten a picture of my boss running a brand new combine with the doors open, but after fighting vineweed, barely working reel and no A/C i was all too happy to do something else that involved air conditioning.

We managed 2 truckloads before a storm built up right on top of us. The proharvest guy was from Washington state was thoroughly fascinated by his first midwest thunderstorm. He took a little too long to decide he had enough pictures and was soaked through before he made it to his truck. We headed for the highway, but before we even hit the elevator, it had stopped raining so we turned around and headed back for the full truck. Wasn't raining the whole 2 miles back to the field so Roddy hopped out and eased on in to town low and slow style. We make it half of the 2 miles back to the elevator before we hit another deluge with some hail added in for cringe factor. The elevator guys were nice enough to stand in the rain and unload the truck so we could drop trailer and send it back for my grain cart. Roddy is sitting Waterville with my cart and orders to not come back without a combine operator. For the one i have in mind I suggested a bottle of crown and some zip ties. Did i mention we're looking for help? Send me message if you're feeling adventurous.

 

[KSSS]

You guys coming up to Eastern Idaho this year?

 

[hvy 1ton]

We'll be there the first week of August with at least 1 machine. It's been busy being short handed, but we've caught up.

 

[Jim D]

Post #9; those are beautiful pictures, hvy!

 

[glenlunberg]

I like the post #1 especially the picture of it. It's a great machine I think.