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Dwayne MB

Posted 10/12/2006 12:52 (#50938 - in reply to #49450)
Subject: Re: Sunflower planting/harvesting questions

Portage MB Canada

Been around these things for all my farming life, I'll give you my 2 cents on what we do and what I've seen

If you want to do it right and want to be in it for the long haul, get a JD 6/853 head no matter what color machine you have. I still have bish adapters for a Gleaner L and a Gleaner R if anyone is interested.

Pans may work, and they may work well for your current condition. But they won't work well in every condition., every year, in every field. These crops are too valuable to have 5,10,20% header loss.

Have a good backing on the header and also high sides. The best things we every tried to keep heads from hanging on the dividers was to put some large PVC pipes on the end. They are rounded and very slippery and keeps the hangers on to a minimum.

You can also add bars or rods to lean the outer row plants toward the center to help things flow better. You can see them in a photo below. You can also notch the flighting to give it some teeth to grab those stalks and pull them in.

Dessicate every chance you get, you don't want to be harvesting in the snow if you can help it. You can see why below.

Keep your machines clean ! Blow off daily or hourly as required. Keep engine compartment and area downwind from the engine clean.

If you smell smoke, don't panic. It is likely just some dust starting to smoulder and can be easily knocked on to the ground with no issues. We carry a small pump up garden sprayer. This works well to put out smoulders. We also carry a big water extinguisher but it can spread things sometimes if you hit it with a big bang. We also carry a dry extinguisher but have never had to use it..

If it is a big one, get the hell away from it and make sure everyone is safe and forget about trying to save it. You did check your fire insurance before growing these things didn't you?

With harvest being so early and warm this year, we expected major fire problems but it was actually much lighter than normal. Only one spark dropped from the 9610 and none from the CTS. Normally the CTS is much worse as the rotors make more dust and static electricity. One theory was that the disease in the heads was very low, which meant the heads didn't go "poof" when the header touched them. This kept the dust much lower than normal.

Keep a tractor in the yard hooked up to a disk, you never know when you drop a spark in a strong wind and you may have some fires going across the field.

Clean the sunflowers on the way into the bin/dryer. No use drying and shipping dockage hundreds of miles. In the certain condition when you are harvesting where their is snow in the back of the heads, the cleaner will actually remove the ice and snow before putting them in the bin. Worth the time and effort. We run 2 cleaners and 2 augers to keep up with 2 combines on 1000 acres with only one truck driver......and damn I'm tired.

The crop was good this year, but not as good as many processors and seed salesmen have been bragging about..

Edited by Dwayne MB 10/12/2006 13:30