Harvest!!

[putsie]

The harvest season officially fired up (finally) for us bright and early Monday morning. 6am I crawled in the M150 swather and began laying down canola swaths.






By noon with about 180 acres knocked down I passed it off to the brother in law and walked to the next field over of lentils thinking perhaps the Reglone had run its course and they'd be ready to combine. After a couple trips down the field, some samples checked over , and such. We decided some more curing time was needed and starting in on the peas may be a better option....

...combines first trip to the field.


Peas it was. They're barely ready to go but, we're tired of waiting so.... close enough, lets get it done already. Yields are great this year, coming in 50-60 bpa depending on the field. But once again we have to deal with nasty black dust that coats everything, almost like coal dust...







A few more pics from yesterday, in the hills.

[nctobfarmer]

Great pictures. What type of peas are those?

[tjctalon]

92bu NICE!

That black dust really looks like a pain in the ass. Do you know why its making that dust?

Also Ive been fallowing all your updates and have a question. Are you only allowed to dry land or is that by choice? I see all the water you have and its more then enough to irrigate.

[putsie]

The peas are of the yellow pea variety. Depending on the market demand they can go for feed or for human consumption. India, for example will buy yellow peas as a replacement for Chickpeas and/or Lentils when those commodities are not as available or affordable.

The black dust to the best of my knowledge is a mold of some sort. I'm not really sure of much else about it than that. The peas themselves are not affected, just the plants. This is now about the 4th year for it being in peas, the first year we ever had it was still the worst one.

Despite what you see in pictures. The water sitting around is not typical. It still is the left over effects of 2011 along with 3 consecutive years of above average rain fall. This is considered a semi-arid climate up here with annual growing season rain fall of 9". We rely on spring run off to provide a large amount of our moisture. The slough's you see around here in pictures will normally collect water in spring, many of them by summer into fall are dry. Some of these sloughs that are currently 4-5' deep are typically 12-16" if they've had a big spring run off. While we may have the water currently for a irrigation project, we also realize that it will disappear too and who knows when (or if) we'll see this kind of water again. The cost of setting up irrigation for what might be 2 years of every 10-15 isn't really cost effective.

That being said there are areas of the province that do have irrigation, but they also have access to water sources such as the Nth and Sth Sask Rivers, not farmer owned sloughs, and I assume gov. funding to help with set up costs.

[putsie]

Some pictures of lentil harvest...

















Had a interesting day back on Friday. Moved into my lentil field first thing in the morning and the neighbors were starting off their field across the road with a pair of 8010's. One of them was my old combine from the past 5 years. Interesting to watch, but I still finished my 150 acres and was LONG gone down the road before they got their 300 ac done and moved, so that made me feel good about the 8230.

Quite a grouping of equipment with a grid road running in between.

[putsie]

Update from the cereal crop harvest

The 8230 continues to impress as the wheat crop this year is not only yielding well but the straw is taller, stronger, overall tougher to chew through. With the somewhat later harvest this year and slower harvesting rates do to the heavier crops having the extra hp has sure been worth while for our one combine operation.




Here's a bit of an interesting comparison between to varieties of spring wheat we grew side by side in one field. They both yielded the same but the one on the right side was sure a lot easier to chew through.









The last of the (1000 acres) Spring wheat we finished off (Thursday) was a qtr section of my own located on my parents "home qtr" where I was raised. I ended up using the bins in their yard this year because storage is at a premium with the above average yields of everything to this point.



Into durum





Can you tell which is spring wheat and which is durum?





A Neighbor was baling some hay in the corner of our field. Looked like a pretty good hay crop for him this year.


Haven't seen one of these guys in a while (porcupine).... Chased him out of the durum



Making the switch to canola for a couple days.






As if picking swaths isn't straight forward enough.... Add in auto steer and it almost becomes boring.... lol.






Back on the home stretch of durum









The rain was hrs away, time to get serious



Rainy/wet spells can be a nice break to catch up on sleep, they can also be costly.... Here's the farms newest addition we found and checked out during the first rainy days, and bought and had delivered yesterday...

[rkd843]

Looks pretty good, how did your canola yield? Have heard of some pretty stellar crops in the area.

Just for the record, the top bin picture is your HRS bottom picture is Durum

What did you have your header width set at in your GPS? We had to go 18-24" narrower then the header width to make up for WAAS inaccuracies otherwise we would randomly miss a pile of crop.

[putsie]

Canola averaged 48bpa. That's pretty "stellar" for around here I would say.

You'll probably need to measure your header. Our 40' isn't actually a 40' cut. More like a 39' true cut. If I remember right I set it up as 38.5 (?) I can't remember exactly. Young's wound up coming out and setting up the RTK on the combine after I had set it anyways....but I've only noticed it to be marginally better than the WAAS we started the year off with. Definitely not up to par with our John Deere system we're running in the 4wd and sprayer..... then again what is up to par with a Deere? lol

[milesmaas]

putsie can you explain to me the reason for the auger on your cart running the way it does i have never seen a cart like that

[putsie]

Oct 5, 2013 18:16:46 GMT -5 milesmaas said:

putsie can you explain to me the reason for the auger on your cart running the way it does i have never seen a cart like that

Not sure I'm understanding the question correctly, but the auger on the grain cart is a turret design same as a combine. Depending on the cart driver preference or field obstacles, etc... it will be swung in or out in the field, doesn't make much difference. The design is nice for loading trucks, being that you can swing the auger while unloading.

[milesmaas]

Oct 6, 2013 9:00:13 GMT -5 putsie said:

Oct 5, 2013 18:16:46 GMT -5 milesmaas said:

putsie can you explain to me the reason for the auger on your cart running the way it does i have never seen a cart like that

Not sure I'm understanding the question correctly, but the auger on the grain cart is a turret design same as a combine. Depending on the cart driver preference or field obstacles, etc... it will be swung in or out in the field, doesn't make much difference. The design is nice for loading trucks, being that you can swing the auger while unloading.

i have never seen a turret style auger but it looks like a good idea just never seen one around here