Dave H

I can't wait for harvest to start for you. I have really enjoyed reading your discoveries and questions. I have always been an IH man but combines were always Massey until Deere took over for us. I often don't know exactly what you are taking about (never been a rotor machine here, either), but a combine is a combine. Learning the quirks now will make it easy for you to know when something sounds a little off.

I'd pay money to watch you cut your first field! It might be like Christmas - you probably won't sleep the night before!

I'm not gonna sleep tonight and that is only because I am going to look at corn heads! And I have a line on a smaller/older flex head also now. I appreciate your kind words very much and also cannot express what a pleasure it has been working with everyone here on this project. I started out just getting some basics on what to look for when shopping out combines. The answers floored me. I hope I hid it well, but I could not understand a blessed thing the guys were telling me. Concaves and rotors, straw walkers and tailings elevators. I needed a rosetta stone for combines. I even Googled "combine parts" more than once trying to decipher the answers. Today I have a completely awesome combine on the driveway outside the shop. I am coming along leaps and bounds learning how it works. I think it will take years but I will get it.

Now about that harvesting. I can remember when I was in grade school the teachers would do a countdown the last month before summer vacation. I hate for summer to end but I REALLY want to pick some corn. There is a hitch in the plan. I only planted 7 acres and, well, it is my first effort and it looks like it. I have corn of every shape and size and colors ranging from lime green to very dark green. Some of this corn is 7 foot high, some is 7 inches high. The dry fertilizer banding I used was not entirely fool proof apparently as I had a couple of lime green stripes (8 rows wide). I wanted to broadcast over the seed bed but rain moved in and MAN, it stayed. By the time I could get on the field again the corn was well up and looked fine, but then the fertilizer issues combined with some heavy wet areas in the field took over...long story short, not gonna be a great yield. I need about 60 bushel corn to break even. Embarrassed to say, prolly not. But it is only 7 acres and I will do MUCH better next year. Can't wait to get at it! There will be enough to combine for sure. Thanks again!

If you have a 8 row planter and buy a 6 row head aren't you going to have some waste? Unless you plant straighter than I do.

Well, been driving tractors a lot of years so I do plant pretty straight. I am not sure it makes a whole heck of a lot of difference if your combine head is off from what your planter plants. Never heard it mentioned before that I can remember. I always figured that was what the "snoots" was for...to part the rows and then when you come back you just start where you left off. I just don't know for sure I guess. I know I am good with my headlands because I plant three for a total of 24 rows because the 1586 takes an acre to turn around with that planter on it. So that would be four times around with the combine, then up and down the roads. Like I said, not sure...never done it.