finally harvesting!

The weather over the past week was pretty good up until today. Last weekend it finally became dry enough for us to be able to do some combining. Starting to harvest on Sept. 26th is one of the latest starts we've ever had. Dad tells the story of not turning a wheel until the first of Oct. one year, but I must have been too young to remember. Here you can see us harvesting our certified organic yellow peas. These peas will be used for human consumption...pea soup! or for animal feed. I will have to spend a little effort trying to market them after harvest is over. These are the peas that Pea Butter is made from.

Heritage Grains for 2010 – Part 3

Harvesting (Combining) the seed plots once they get too big to harvest by hand becomes more of a challenge. I have been agonizing over the purchase of a newer, larger combine for the past year. I have pretty much made up my mind to buy an International 914. It is a large pull-type combine from the late 70’s. It is a conventional combine as opposed to a rotary so it is simple and cheap to repair; and I have the 3788 2+2 to pull it with. They are a good sized combine for under $2000! With this new combine I will be able keep the Gleaner C2 free to harvest the smaller plots and just clean it out between plots. It is small enough to clean very easily. I am always on the lookout for another C2 sized combine. They are less than $1000 and usually closer to free!

Buckwheat Harvest

I thought I would post another video. This one from the cab of the Allis Chalmers CII combine. Sorry it is a little dark. It lightens up later when I get into the sun more. This gives an idea of what it is like to run the combine up and down the swaths of buckwheat during the harvest procedure. It is a rather slow process. This video was taken on October 7.

When I swathed the buckwheat in late August, it was 5' tall in places and fully green with tons of vegetation. I used a small 14' MF swather and even then the swaths behind the swather were huge. It took over a month for the buckwheat to dry down enough to be able to send it through the combine. The seeds themselves were dry enough, but the stalks of the plant were green and wet which made plugging the combine a real concern. As it was, I still ended up plugging the combine several times per day. Next year, I will wait a while longer before I swath and I will cut the plants a little higher leaving taller stubble.