Small squares mostly AGCO

Ranse wrote: Beats picking 'em up by hand. I wonder how long it would take to pay for all that equipment at 25000 bales of straw a year?

I do marvel at the lengths some folks will go to avoid touching a small square bale. The only part of that that makes sense to me is once it is in the barn, it is on a large pallet that allows them to load out for shipping without have to handle them a second and 3rd time.

I would love to know what they are getting per bale, and with all that labor and machinery cost, what the profit is per bale.

As for that Gleaner combine, back in the late 70's I was given the honor of running a Gleaner L one year, including the summer we harvested 800 acres of wheat. It was like running a portable seed cleaner. Would have enjoyed it a lot more, except the air conditioner was out and owner wouldn't fix it.

My first time running a combine was when I was a kid, I was tasked with keeping it running straight while Dad got off and followed along behind catching the chaff coming off the sieves in back. He would catch a bunch in a scoop shovel and pick through it to see how much grain was going out the back. If too much, adjustments were made until there wasn't any.  (as an aside, I'm told the original owner of the D15 I'm working on did the same......except he caught the chaff with his hat). So that is pretty much how I was taught to set and run a combine. If you were going to go to all the trouble to plant and raise a crop, you might as well try to harvest ALL of it.

Back to the summer of running the L.........owner got pannicky that we would not get all his wheat cut, so he hired a neighbor.....who had two combines.....an IH 715 and a JD 3300.....and they came to help out as custom cutters. They did no such thing with their adjustments. In fact, they seemed more concerned with grinding up the acres than harvesting wheat. They were running about twice as fast as I was....black smoke was rolling from both machines and chaff was fogging out the back. They had simply opened up the sieves and turned up the fans. About a month after they left, the chaff piles they left in the field had sprouted so much volunteer wheat it looked like a big long chia pet.

Seeing the big Gleaner running in that video reminded me of watching Al and wife Charleen grinding up the acres........and leaving about 10 bushel of wheat on the ground in the process.