Ok, blog readers. This might be the least amount of pictures for Farm Week in Pictures ever. Why would that be? Well I was only on the farm one day. I spent the rest of the week doing farm-like things, but I believe they are worthy of their own posts. So please enjoy all two pictures I snapped while I was at my real job this week.
So Long, Combine
This is the last you’ll see of our 2010 9670 STS. After snapping this photo I hopped in the cab and drove the machine to town to be left at the dealership. We are getting a new(er) machine to harvest with this fall.
Why trade in such a nice combine? Because we have been trading up to 1 or 2-year-old machines for a while now. Newer machines mean lower operating hours which equate to low hours. Low hours mean we aren’t running machines to the point where we might have to pay for major repairs like we might on an older machine. When we trade combines the unit has less than 1,000 engine hours. Also John Deere has better financing on used equipment than new. It’s hard to beat 0% interest so we just keep trading at regular intervals of 2-3 years.
We may have kept this particular combine another year, but you’ll see why we traded this year if you read on.
New Toys
I think this is our new stuff getting prepped at our local John Deere dealer. I’m not certain because I didn’t stop to ask the salesman. But even if this isn’t ours the model numbers are right. We are getting a combine much like our old one. In fact we are having the front tires of our old combine swapped onto the new one. This combine is a 9670 STS only it will be one year newer. We have a brand new head for cutting soybeans and wheat. We bought a 635FD this year. That translates to a 35′ wide flex draper. This will be our first draper, and I’m pretty excited to harvest with it ASAP. Instead of a metal floor and a large cross auger feeding soybeans to the center drapers are equipment with large moving belts that feed the combine. I’m sure I’ll be talking to you a lot more about drapers once I get behind the wheel.
The draper is the reason we traded this year. Our 2010 can run a draper with several thousand dollars in upgrades. This 2011 is already setup to run a draper, so we ought to come out ahead in the long run. Our 2010 trade will be worth more too with one less harvest under its belt. Running a combine isn’t cheap by any means. Basically our trade difference is figured by the difference in the hours on the machines at a rate of $200/hr!!
See you next week and be on the look our for my posts about my adventures from the rest of this week.
Related articles
Predictably there might a S670 in the future here
I imagine our next trade will be to a lightly used S series.
Pictures & reporting from Columbus to follow
What factors influenced your decision to invest in a draper head?
Tom, anytime I have a problem with soybeans feeding properly I’ve felt that a draper would fix most of those problems. Getting rid of that cross auger and having a moving floor are going to be a big improvement I think. Drapers must be good because they’ve killed the regular platform market. We didn’t get a whole lot out of our 635F we traded in and it’s only two years old. Last fall was the final straw as we sat still for three damp, not rainy, days last year unable to cut soybeans. Each day we would drive up to our furthest field to try and cut again just to find out it was too wet, we’d see a couple of our neighbors with drapers running along just fine.