If you have the operators manual for your digger or combine, pull it out and review the maintenance and operating steps recommended for your machines. A lot of valuable information can be found in those publications and it is tailored for your machine. Taking time to monitor and adjust peanut combines costs very little. A few minutes of down time to examine performance and make adjustments is all that is required. However, these adjustments are critical to harvesting all the peanuts that have been produced.
Successful harvesting requires good management.
A lot has happened since August of 1999 when I wrote the last annual report. The day after Hurricane Floyd, we had 42 inches of flood water in the offices of North Carolina Peanut Growers and Virginia Carolina Peanut Promotions. Almost everything in the office was ruined. The next two months were spent cleaning out and starting all over again. However these problems were minor when compared to many peanut farmers in North Carolina and Virginia.