One more… one less: Final Harvest Report 2018

“One more harvest done, one less harvest to do…” Harvest finished on the 29th of September this year, one of the later finishes we’ve had for a while. It pretty much followed the pattern of the year so far, in that it was totally weird. We had an early start, and it looked like we were going to have an early harvest, as the crops were ripening fast with it being so dry and warm. Then the weather sort of half broke around the middle of August, and all the crops from the farm up the hill just stopped dead in their tracks. It was almost as if they got the rain, and stopped to take a good long drink before finishing off their ripening. It meant we had a long pause in the middle, and much frustration as we were wanting to get on and get it done.

Having said that, the pauses did give us a chance to get other things done, more of which later.

Demonstrator Combine

In my posts last year, I mentioned that our combine was a bit old, and probably needing replaced. Because we had repair work to do at the grain dryer this year I put on hold plans to change the combine, and our one has successfully negotiated another harvest without too much bother. However, it was very much on my mind that a major or serious breakdown might not be far away. Last year I had a wee shot of a New Holland combine and I was very impressed. Our ‘breed’ of combine is Case, and it is a totally different design from other makes, so I was quite glad when the local Case dealer, J. Low Agri Services, offered me a demonstration of a new Case combine. The feature picture of the post shows it in full work readiness, and the picture below shows it parked up in the farmyard where all the neighbours could clearly see it 🙂

Case 6140 Combine — Demonstrator Case 6140 Axial Flow Combine

This combine is the mid range model, but is still far bigger than ours. The header (the bit that does the cutting) is 25 feet (over 7 metres) wide, where ours is just 20 feet (over 6 metres). The extra width means you can cut more – in theory, but as I found out it does have its problems. A header that size is fine if you have big fields that are reasonably level. They don’t need to be flat, as the header ‘floats’ – ie it follows the contours, but we have some smaller fields, and fields with steep gulleys. This meant that the ends of the header could be hitting the ground, where the middle of it was sitting above the crop.

However, overall I was impressed, and it was a pleasure to drive and to use. I wasn’t impressed enough to ask for the price though. That will have to wait until later on in the winter.

Far Flung Outpost of the Empire

The main crop we grow at Cults Farm is malting barley. This is all sold to East of Scotland Farmers, a farmer owned co-operative who are based in Coupar Angus about 30 miles away from us. The way it works is they operate a grain pool. Basically their growers supply the malting barley to EoSF, who dry it down and store it. They then market it to the Maltsters over the winter. The price you get paid is the average of what they manage to sell it for. You get paid in installments through the winter, the first one usually coming in early October, so they want to get it all in by early September at the latest. This means that grain is going away almost as fast as it is coming off the combine – usually.

Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way this year for a number of reasons, and we found ourselves scrabbling about a bit to try and fit grain in as we harvested it. The first problem we have is that we are one of the furthest away members of the co-op, so organising haulage is a bit more challenging for them.

Secondly, the weather meant that everyone was cutting very ripe spring barley at the same time, and they were flooded out with malting barley coming in (as were the hauliers trying to lift it all).

Thirdly, we had agreed to store some of our barley until the end of the season for them, as this was a trial batch of a new variety (Sassy) for one of their maltster clients. Knowing this we planned our storage space out on the basis that the other variety we grew (Laureate) would be lifted fairly quickly after we cut it, but of course this didn’t happen.

Now, we have plenty storage space – we can easily store all our harvest in various sheds if we have to – but this year the available space was all in the wrong places. Thankfully the bulk of the Laureate was cut fairly dry so it didn’t start to spoil in the shed, but it was a bit of a struggle for a while.

Laureate barley in shed — Laureate in a ‘tidy heap’ awaiting uplift.

The other consequence of this was that we loaded over 700 tonnes of barley in just over 2 weeks – while we were desperately trying to get harvest finished. To say things were hectic is an understatement!

However, we got there. We were patient and talked regularly to the transport manager at EoSF, so that we (and he) knew what stages we were at. We are very grateful to Malcolm, Colin and Robin for their efforts in what was a tricky year.

Barley Quality and Yields

Every year has its own problems as far as grain quality is concerned. Two years ago our grain nitrogen levels were on the high side. Last year the grain skinned very easily (the husk of the barley comes away from the seed too easily). This year there were two problems: nitrogen levels and germination (I talk about ‘nitrogen’, but really I mean compounds containing nitrogen – proteins).

The nitrogen levels were high because the year has been dry. This has meant that the crop yield is well back, so any nitrogen the plant has taken up has gone into fewer grains that it normally would – so the nitrogen content of the grain was higher. Nitrogen levels were high across the country, and yields were down, so the maltsters agreed to lift their tolerances for nitrogen from 1.65 to 1.7. This made a huge difference.

Germination levels are extremely important in malting barley. The food store in a barley seed is starch. For brewers and distillers to make us of this it has to be turned in to sugar, so it can turn to alcohol in the fermentation process. The way this happens is to allow the seed to start to grow, so that it gets as far as turning the starch into sugar, and then stopping it. Obviously if the seed is dead, it won’t grow. Germination levels for malting barley have to be 96% or higher.

As I have said elsewhere, Cults Farm has early ground down the bottom of the hill, and later ground up the top. We had no bother with germination on the early ground, but as harvest progressed (and we got some rain), levels started to fall. Thankfully we only had one load rejected for germination (92%), and to be honest we weren’t that surprised when we heard about it.

Harvest Technology

Harvest technology has come on leaps and bounds since I came home to farm in the early 1990’s. You can get GPS that steers the combine, and maps the yield in a field (though we don’t have either), the combine can set itself, and follow the contours of the ground. However, perhaps the most essential part of the Cults Farm combine driver’s toolkit are a pair of Automagic Crop Ripening (ACR) Goggles. When you get close to the end of harvest and you are impatient for a crop to ripen off, simply put on a pair of ACR goggles and the crop appears ripe, allowing you to carry on harvesting.

These were originally pioneered by a neighbour of ours (the first version being known as ‘Ainslie Specs’), but we have developed and refined the design to include the standard ACR goggles, and the deluxe version. This has extra enhancements such as Instant Weather Improver (IWI) which makes clouds and rainfall invisible giving the impression of a sunny harvest day, and the optional Crop Yield Enhancer (CYE) which gives the impression the crop is actually quite good. This can turn the impatience of finishing a late harvest into a pleasant experience.

The below pictures show the view the combine driver would normally see of an unripe crop, and then the same crop viewed with deluxe ACR goggles with IWI and CYE turned on.

Unripe barley — Unripe crop of barley being harvested

The same barley crop viewed through Deluxe ACR Goggles

And Finally…

Combine Driver Companions – Sally & Susie

Harvest is a very stressful time of the year and we are very grateful to the people who help out, and generally help things to go smoothly. In no particular order:

Brian, David, & Cameron for driving combines, tractors, watching grain dryers, and helping to keep myself and Dad sane.

Stuart from Sellars for keeping the combine going.

Charlie Pryde for keeping the dryer going.

Chrystal Petroleum for making sure we had plenty fuel for grain dryers, combines & tractors.

Sally and Susie for keeping the combine driver company on long harvest days. They are too old to jump out from the cab to chase rabbits now, but that doesn’t stop them turning somersaults in the cab when they see one!

Harvest Report: August 2018

Last year I was able to do a harvest report once a week, but due to weather conditions we haven’t actually done that much harvest since last time I wrote. There has, however, been lots of things going on that are worth talking about.

Grain Dryer Fire

Last time I wrote I said that work was still being done on getting the new elevators and conveyors put in at the grain dryer. Work was completed, and everything up and running on 10th August. We spent the next few days putting the winter barley through the dryer, and were starting to move it round to the grain store. By the middle of the following week we were up to date with the drying, but I left grain in the dryer as the burners were due to be serviced.

There are 3 diesel fired burners in our grain dryer which I get serviced once a year, but because work had been ongoing I had delayed it. The engineer arrived just after lunch time on Wednesday, and cleaned all 3 burners. Now, normally we only run with 2 burners at a time but because we were testing all 3, I turned the temperature up, and we had all 3 burners going. Everything checked out fine, and I switched the burners off, leaving the fans on to let the dryer cool down. That’s when the fun started. We started to smell smoke, and there was smoke coming out of one of the exhaust pipes of the dryer.

I called for the fire brigade almost immediately, and started unloading the grain in the dryer as fast as I could. The dryer holds approximately 16 tonnes of grain, and I reckon I had about half of it out when the unloading mechanism stopped…

The fire brigade were here with 2 units within about 20 minutes, and by this time we could see which part of the dryer was on fire, as the metal was glowing red, and the odd flame was licking out from it.

They had the fire out within a few minutes, but we still had to get the dryer emptied so they could make sure it would not flare up again.

To cut a long story short, I had to get Stuart from Sellars out to help me clear the dry grain elevator, and Andy from Anderson’s Electricians to see if he could get the unloading mechanism working again. Thankfully he could, and we had the dryer emptied within half an hour. This enabled the fire brigade to dampen down any other hotspots they found, and everything was back under control.

It was 7.00pm at this point. I was soaked, black and blue, and my back was killing me, but I was so relieved that we’d caught it before it got well out of control.

The next few days were spent clearing up the mess, speaking to NFU Mutual (our insurers), and waiting on new parts, but by Wednesday this week we were back up and running again. We only lost 9 tonnes of grain due to smoke or fire damage, which was lucky to say the least.

I can only surmise that a spark from one of the burners hit a pocket of dust, which combined with the higher temperature, ignited.

Harvest Fever and Bare Ground Syndrome

Harvest Fever and Bare Ground Syndrome (BGS) are undocumented medical conditions that affect all arable farmers, and I’m sure some gardners as well. They both occur in late summer/early autumn, and early symptoms are twitching, restlessness, and continually looking at the weather forecast. I will deal with Harvest Fever first.

Harvest Fever

Harvest fever usually happens when a neighbour’s combine is seen to be working when yours is not. You may have a perfectly good reason for not combining, but that is irrelevant. The affected farmer will spend time rushing round his crops checking to see if there is anything fit to cut, and if so, the combine is rushed out to make a start. I suffered a minor case myself last week.

We had had a good day combining on the Friday, and there had been rain overnight. The weather during the morning had been cloudy, and things were not drying out, so I (correctly I thought) decided that there was little or no chance of combining. I had some errands to do in St. Andrews, which is about 10 miles away from me, so late afternoon I set off.

After about 3 miles I noticed that the sun was appearing, and shortly after that I passed my first combine. It was cutting wheat in a field next the road. “It’s OK, they’ve had sun here, which we’ve not had” I told myself as I drove on. After a further 4 miles I passed a second combine, also cutting wheat, in brilliant sunshine. I began to feel uncomfortable. Just outside St Andrews I passed a third combine, and well, that was just too much.

I literally flew round my errands, shot back home, and Cameron and I went and cut some barley. Was it fit to cut? Probably. I don’t care. I felt better at having done something…

Bare Ground Syndrome (BGS)

Like all good farmers, we plan a crop rotation of sorts. We set out a rough plan before harvest of what we are going to grow, and where. It is only a rough plan, as the weather can greatly influence things, but BGS is something that has to be watched for. BGS tends to appear where a field has been cleared of its crop, the weather is good, and the farmer has time on his/her hands. It tends to afflict the older generation of farmers worse, as they were farming at a time where every scrap of land had to be productive, but it can afflict the younger generation too if they are not careful. You get the same twitching and restlessness as with harvest fever, but this time it is because the farmer feels they’ve GOT_TO_GROW_SOMETHING!!! Economic and rotational rationale goes completely out the window as there is a compulsion to get a crop in that bare ground. When confronted with what is happening the affected farmer is able to come up with a myriad of plausible reasons as to why it is a good idea, and a firm hand is required to convince him of what is actually happening.

Back to the Future

Two years ago we decided to stop growing Oilseed rape. The main reason was that it wasn’t really making money, but it also tended to put us under extra pressure in August, when it was sown. Oilseed rape is a difficult crop to establish, and weed control can be a real problem. I can honestly say we’ve not regretted the decision since then.

Contractor ‘min-tilling’ stubble before drilling

This year we have sown 35 acres of oilseed rape… but the ground was in perfect condition for establishing rape, we picked a variety that gives us greater flexibility for weed control, and we used a contractor to do all the work!!

Oilseed Rape Establishment

Under normal circumstances we would plough ground before sowing a crop. Ploughing buries all the weeds, trash and rubbish and gives the new crop a good start, but the biggest problem with it is it takes time. The alternative is what is known as ‘minimum tillage’, or min-till for short. Here only the top 5 – 10cm of the soil is cultivated and the crop is sown. The theory is that by not inverting the soil you are keeping the natural drainage channels open, and also all the worm activity is undisturbed, so you are improving the soil structure where it matters. Generally speaking we are unconvinced by most of these arguments, but because it is so much faster than ploughing and if the conditions are right, then we will use it.

Euan drilling Oilseed rape behind the cultivator

From the pictures you will see there is some straw or stubble left on the top. The field is a light sandy field, which means that if it dries out and a wind gets up, then the sand will blow. If the young seedlings are newly emerged when this happens, then they get stripped out. The straw/stubble on the top gives them a bit more protection, which is an added benefit over ploughing.

Harvest Progress

We finished the winter barley on the 4th of August, and it was a reasonable crop considering the year. Due to the poor weather we didn’t get any spring barley cut until the 17th of August, and only got the one day and a bit. The fields we have cut so far are both sandy, so suffered with the drought this summer. The crop has not been good. The barley was destined for malting, but the grain nitrogen levels were high, at 1.71. In a normal year, the maximum allowed is 1.65, but because of the year nitrogen levels are high generally so the tolerance has been raised to 1.75 in some circumstances, and this may be raised higher at a later date as the full picture of Scottish crop quality becomes clear.

Grain prices are holding up very well, which will make up for the poorer crop, and as suspected there is very little straw.

2018 – The Weirdest of the Weird!

In the depths of the snow back in March this year, who would have thought it that we would be starting harvest on the 22nd of July? The above picture shows the combine working in our first field of winter barley in glorious sunshine – so hot in fact that after taking the photo it was a relief to get back in the tractor to the air conditioned cab.

This season has without doubt been the weirdest one I have experienced in my 35 odd years of being a farmer. In an earlier post I put up a table showing that this spring was the latest one in that time. Although we have started harvest earlier than this (but not by much), the interesting fact will be to see when we start harvesting spring barley. At the moment I think it will be early August, which will mean (after the late spring) the growing season has been very short indeed.

The Weather

After a cool wet spring we have had a prolonged dry spell. I wrote last time (2nd June) that we had the longest dry spell that I’d recorded on the weather station (20 days), and we have also recorded the highest apparent temperature of 30.9C on 28th June. There has been some rain, but not enough – 53.2mm, the wettest day being the 14th of June with 14.8mm. Another 8.8mm of that total fell last night. The rain has come in lumps rather than spread evenly.

So how have these extremes of weather affected the crops? Cults Farm is on the side of a hill, with light sandy soil down the bottom, gradually changing to quite heavy clays up the top. Sandy soils let water pass through them, so crops have suffered with the heat and drought. Clay soils will hold water much better, so the crops are coping reasonably well on these soils.

The following picture starkly illustrates the problem on the lighter soils:

How the weather has affected one field at Cults Farm

The area of white flowers near the bottom is an area where we could not drill a crop in the spring because the soil was too wet. As you move up the picture, you see light patches and dark green patches. The lighter patches are where the crop has run out of water, and is literally dying on its feet. The green patches are where the soil has managed to hold on to water better, and so the crop is still managing to grow.

Impact on Yields

This is very hard to predict, as generally speaking Cults Farm does better than you think it will in a dry year, and not as good as you think in a wetter one. The one thing that it is having a severe impact on is the amount of straw. The straw is very short this year, and so there will not be a lot of it. The shortage of straw is exacerbated by a poor crop last year, so prices have gone through the roof.

Wild Oats

Wild oats are a grass weed, and a very prolific one when they get established. If you have one plant in year 1, then in year 2 there will be 5 – 10, year 3 there will 50 – 100, and so on. They are an annual, which means they grow from seed every year.

Wildo Oat Plant growing in a crop of spring barley

They are an expensive weed to control using chemical sprays, because you are trying to control a grass weed in a cereal crop (which is a grass), so as long as you catch then early enough, the most cost effective method of control is roguing. This is where you walk through the crop and you pull them out, and carry them off in a bag for disposal. They are quite easy to spot, as they usually sit well above the crop (see photo), but if you see 1, you can guarantee there will be at least 5 that are smaller and just below the level of the crop, so care must be taken.

Having teenagers who need to earn some money is an advantage, as there is usually a ready supply of roguers. Add in a good summer like this one, and what better way to spend a Friday evening with the family than out roguing for wild oats? 🙂

These photos were taken on a warm Friday evening where we were all out for a couple of hours. An ice cold beer has never tasted so good!

Grain Dryer Progress

Way back in December preparations were started to put in new elevators and conveyors for the grain dryer. The idea was that if we started in plenty time, then everything would be in place well before the start of harvest. Unfortunately things haven’t quite worked out that way.

Again, the weather has played an important part. We effectively lost March due to the snow. April, May and June were drier than normal, which meant that a lot of farmers in our area were irrigating their vegetable crops. This put an unprecedented demand on Sellars to keep these irrigators working, and couple that with being short staffed means not much happened with the grain dryer until the beginning of July.

July is the holiday time, so since the 16th of July there has been a bit of a rush to get things up. I would imagine things should be up and running within the next week to ten days, but there is still quite a bit of work to be done as I write today. Once the engineers have finished, we have to get electricians in, and also joiners to put in new flooring in certain areas.

Harvest Update

Harvest started on 22nd July as I have said earlier. The crop was reasonable considering the dry weather, and just as importantly it was fairly dry. At about 16% moisture content it will keep in the shed for a considerable time, so thankfully we are not feeling the loss of the grain dryer too much yet.

There was only 1 field ready, the next two will probably be ready by the end of this week. Then we will have a short break before starting on the spring barley, probably the week after.

Harvest 17 Update: All is Safely Gathered In!

It’s been a few weeks since I updated what we have been up to. It feels like a lifetime, but looking back from here, I wonder sometimes what all the fuss was about! Harvest finished on 19th September, which was just over 7 weeks from when we started, which is about bang on average. The last couple of weeks were a bit fraught though.

Breakdowns

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I was nursing the combine through harvest as best I could. We’d just had a fan bearing go, and the hydraulic oil cooler was leaking, but I was keeping an eye on things. The fan bearing and associated shafts, cogs, etc were all successfully replaced, and I got back to harvesting almost exactly a week after breaking down. I was cutting perhaps the steepest field on the farm, so was taking my time, and just about had it finished. While turning on the side of a hill, the hydraulic oil warning light/buzzer came on, but just briefly. I didn’t have much to do until I’d finished the bit I was on, so carried on until I’d emptied into the trailer at the side of the field. I’d been having to top up the hydraulic oil level periodically because of the leak, so I thought that was all I would have to do. However when I got to the back ladder, there were spots of hydraulic oil on it, which got more as I went up to the engine compartment. The cooler leak had got worse, so I limped my way down to a level part of the field next the gate, and gave Stuart at Sellars a phone again. 5 minutes later the rain came on anyway, so I didn’t lose out on much.

We lost a day and a half until the cooler was repaired, during which it rained. I managed to finish the field on the Friday, but what a change in ground conditions. Things had been damp on the Wednesday, but now they were wet. Getting up the hill was a real challenge.

The other major breakdown we had was at the grain dryer. Our dryer is a continuous flow dryer, which means that it is a column, where wet grain goes in at the top, and by the time it gets to the bottom it is dry. Grain is moved in to and away from the dryer by a system of elevators and conveyors – the elevator moving the grain up, and the conveyors in a horizontal direction. The elevator works by having a series of buckets fixed to a rubber belt, the grain being transported up in a bucket, and then chucked out at the top. Our elevator is a double legged elevator which is quite old. It has been on the radar for being replaced for a number of years, but due to costs, and restrictions of the building the dryer is in, we’ve not done anything. Our hand will be forced over the winter. The belt in the leg that handles the wet grain snapped.

The picture shows the result. The leg on the right is what it should look like. The left leg was the one that took the wet grain from either the pit or the wet bin, and put it in a conveyor which fed the top of the dryer. Thankfully we were able to keep going by drying the grain in batches, rather than continuous flow, and using the one leg to both empty and fill the dryer. It was a slow process, but we only had about 100 tonnes to dry at this point, so we managed.

The Weather

Away back in April I wondered if we were in for a wet harvest, as the spring had been so dry, and so it has turned out. To be fair though, it hasn’t been soaking wet (yet), but there has been some rain most days, which has meant that we never really got a good run at things. The weather station report below illustrates this clearly:

Harvest lasted a total of 52 days, in which only 14 had no rain at all. Yet we had less than 100mm in that time. It is not unknown for a wet month to be in excess of 120mm, so the main problem was the frequency of the rain, rather than the total amount. We were glad we finished when we did, as the good harvest days since the 19th September have been very few indeed.

Harvest Results

Looking at the broad picture it has been an average harvest. The winter barley was disappointing, coming in at 5.74 tonnes/hectare, which is below our 5 year average of 6.66 tonnes/hectare. Partly this was due to the disaster we had in one field that had a bad infestation of sterile brome (1.4 tonnes/hectare). This was our fault rather than the year, and when it is taken out the equation things don’t look quite so poor. Pretty much all the winter barley was up the hill this year, and when compared with similar spring barley, it is holding its own.

Spring barley came in at 6.38 tonnes/hectare, which is slightly above our 5 year average of 6.15 tonnes/hectare. However looking just at the average hides the quite a lot. Yields ranged from 4.02 tonnes/hectare – 7.97 tonnes/hectare, depending on what soil type and where on the farm. Also, all the higher yielding fields were growing either Concerto or Laureate, which went away for malting at a premium.

Partly because of the poor weather we chopped more straw than we normally would. It was hard enough finding good weather to cut the crop, never mind bale the straw, and we still have one field that we sold in the bout still lying there.

In Summary

I think this has been one of the hardest harvests I’ve done, though it may be that my memory is playing tricks. It is never much fun when the farmyard and fields are muddy, and you can’t get on with the work you know needs to be done. As usual I am grateful to the various companies and organisations that helped us. In no particular order: Stuart Miller and the mechanics at Sellars who kept the combine going; Jock Elliot and the drivers at Chrystal Petroleum who somehow managed to keep both the dryer and combine going in fuel even at short notice sometimes, and to Brian and David Addison who were available to help when it was most needed.

I will finish with a picture I took of the combine on the last evening just before I finished. The dogs are perhaps the only ones who are disappointed to see the end of harvest, as they get a far better view from the combine than they do the tractor!

Harvest 17 Update: Week 5 – a time of reckoning?

A combine harvester is a very important piece of kit for us, as all we grow are combinable crops. This past week or so the combine has been on my mind more than usual during harvest, and I fear a time of reckoning is not far away.

The Combine Story

Our combine is quite old. It was already old when it came to us for harvest in 2011, and had done over 1200 engine hours, which is quite a bit. Things were a bit tight financially and our combine was needing major repairs, so when this one came available my thinking was it would do us for 5 seasons. By that time I hoped things might have improved enough for us to consider a newer combine, but it is now in its 7th season with us. Don’t get me wrong, it has been a really good and reliable combine, but I fear it is starting to show its age.

In an earlier post I mentioned that we’d had to get Stuart out to look at an oil leak. This is still on going, and I have nursed the combine through harvest with a view to getting it fixed when it is in for its winter service. I was giving the combine its routine 100 hour service this morning, and noticed another oil leak. I’ve seen this one before, and I know it is quite a big job to repair, so this is definitely one for the winter time. With harvest nearing an end, I’ll keep an eye on it and the relevant oil level, with a view to adding it to the winter repair list.

Unfortunately I had to get Stuart out again this afternoon. I’d stopped to move a tractor and trailer, and the noise I heard coming from the cleaning fan was not good. Turns out the thrust bearing is going, and when he took it apart, various other bits are going too. So I had to stop this afternoon while he orders up the bits to get it fixed.

And so I am going to have to think about replacing it. It is the usual dilemma of how much money do you spend on repairs before calling a halt, and changing it? The middle of harvest is not the time to think about changing, so we’ll revisit it sometime before Christmas. The idea of changing it was at the back of my mind earlier, and I’d organised a demonstration of a New Holland combine for last week. It was only here for a couple of hours, but it was enough for me to consider changing make. I’ll discuss the whole thing in a later blog post.

On a brighter note, Brian and I managed to make repairs to the straw chopper, so although my thrust is going at least my chopper is working!

Harvest Progress

Since I last posted we have made good progress despite the efforts of the weather. As of Sunday night we were 80% through harvest, with only a few fields left to do that were ready. This coming week will see us catch up, and be waiting for perhaps 10 days until the last of it ripens off.

Yields and quality have been fairly good, with almost all the Laureate making the grade for malting, and what Concerto has been lifted has done so too. We were struggling for space at one point, but East of Scotland Farmers managed to lift the last of the Laureate, which allowed us to move the Concerto down to that shed. This in turn allowed us to start harvesting the third variety of spring barley we have – Belgravia. We started it on Saturday, and we had cut all that was ready by Sunday evening.

Robert Doig was in lifting his potatoes this week. I had meant to get some photos, but he was over the ground so fast I never got down.

Finally we are trying an experiment by selling some straw in the bout through Tayforth Machinery Ring.

They organise the baling, and there were two massive square balers in on Sunday baling a field. I had to go and stack them with the forklift after, and they will be lifted by lorry at some point in the next few weeks.

Harvest17 Update: Week 4

I thought I’d start this week with a picture of us actually combining something. Progress is being made, and all my indicators and benchmarks point to the fact that we are now half way through harvest. As a rough rule of thumb, harvest takes about 8 weeks from start to finish, so time wise we are half way. The total are to be harvested is now slightly less than the area we have cut, so that makes us just over half way. Finally, the combine has successfully cut round 3 out of the 5 pylons in fields growing combinable crops. This guide is not as accurate this year, and I would imagine by the time I am writing the next update there will be no pylons left to cut round.

Weather wise, things were so-so. We got combining on Monday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, and again on Saturday and Sunday. Friday was a washout, which meant that although we were cutting on Saturday the grain was very wet, so has taken a bit of drying. The general theme of the year continued, with lots of little bits of rain which stopped us cutting without there being a deluge.

Stuart Millar working on the combine – never a good sign.

We had to call on Stuart Millar from Sellars this week. Stuart has looked after our combines for a number of years, and I’m sure his heart sinks every time he sees my number when his phone rings.

When I was putting on the straw chopper I noticed drips of oil down the side of the combine. He suspected that the hydraulic oil cooler was cracked, which is not good. However, he cleaned things up, tightened up a couple of hose clips, and things appeared to get better. He left me with instructions to keep an eye on things.

Another problem we are having this year is brackling in the barley.

Brackling is when the stem breaks over half way up when the crop is ripe. This means that instead of the head being held up in the air, it is hanging inches off the ground. When the combine cutter bar cuts the straw, the head drops on the ground, rather than go in the combine.

We try to help the situation by fitting lifters to the front of the cutter bar, which lifts the heads up a bit. It does help, but if the brackling is really bad, then there isn’t much else you can do.

On a brighter note, all the samples of Laureate spring barley have made malting standards this year. We sell our malting barley to East Of Scotland Farmers, and they have uplifted 4 lorry loads this week. It is the usual story though, that every farmer in the country has malting barley to be moved, so you cannot always get lorries in when you need them. We have successfully juggled our shed space so far this year, but things could get interesting next week when we start cutting a different variety.

In summary I have to say that we now at least feel as though we are getting somewhere. The forecast is good for the next week, and we have a few fields ready to harvest, so by the next update I am hoping to report good progress.

Harvest 17 Update: Week 3

Well, it is just as well us farmers are by nature uncomplaining cheery chappies! The photo below shows the closest I got to harvest for most of the week – and even then it was raining!

Closest I got to harvest for most of the week!

The weather was again against us, but as a consolation there wasn’t really that much ready. We had one field of what was supposed to be winter barley to cut, which I duly did on Thursday, but it didn’t take long. We always seem to have one disaster, and this field was it. Basically the weed control was less than adequate, and the field was taken over by a grass weed called sterile brome. It had swamped out pretty much all the barley. To make matters worse, I had a breakdown on the combine when the knife bar broke.

As can be seen from the bottom picture, it has been going for some time. You can see a small area of silver at the top left corner. That is the fresh break, the rest of the break is rusted, meaning that it has been exposed to air, and is therefore older.

It didn’t take too long to fix, and I was up and running again within an hour.

Thankfully on Saturday the sun appeared, and a good drying wind got going. We were able to make a start to the spring barley in the afternoon after getting the dryer cleared of the last of the winter barley.

The spring barley has to be kept separate as it is destined (hopefully) for the malting market. Also, I disabled the straw chopper on the combine, as we are selling the straw to a neighbour, who arrived with his baler on Sunday.

Other developments included the dryer being fixed – many thanks to Charlie Pryde for coming out on Monday and putting things right. All 3 burners have worked perfectly since then. Finally we lost our ‘trainee farmer’ this week when Cameron went back to school on Wednesday. Hopefully he’ll still be happy to help us out at weekends.

Harvest 17 Update: Week 2

Well, that has certainly been some week! I think we’ve about had it all. Rain, sun, breakdowns… We’re only 2 weeks in to harvest and I’m shattered already.

We’ll start with the weather. The forecast was (generally speaking) right, in that it was a much better week. Consequently we managed to get on well with harvest, almost finishing the winter barley by Sunday evening.

Grain moistures also dropped significantly, starting off the week at over 23%, and by about Friday, this had fallen to around 16%. To store grain safely, it needs to be dried below 15% moisture content, so getting it cut reasonably dry saves a bit of money in drying costs. There was, however, some really beefy showers, and it is shaping up to be a wet(ish) harvest – when a cloud passes over you, you get wet.

It also means that getting about the fields can become a problem, as the picture shows. At this stage we are just worried about getting the crop off, but tracks like this can cause problems when it comes to establishing the next crop.

Breakdowns. We’ve had our fair share of these already, but thankfully nothing so far that has been a show stopper. The combine picked up a stone one evening. Combine harvesters do not like stones at all. Thanks to a rapid reaction from the driver, serious damage was avoided, but we lost 4 retractable fingers, at least one of which went right through the combine, breaking straw chopper blades on the way out. On Saturday morning we decided we would attempt to repair the broken blades, and according to the instruction manual it was a simple process of ‘remove plate from side of combine, remove pin and holding rod, replace blades through slot, reinsert rod and pin.’ Being a farmer you have to be a jack of all trades, but one skill is to know when to stop. We got as far as ‘remove pin and holding rod ‘, and couldn’t find the pin. We noticed at the same time that the rod in question had a bit of a bow, which would mean it could be difficult to remove, and even more difficult to put back in. We decided to quit while we were ahead, so the straw chopper will not be chopping so finely for the rest of the season, and Sellars can fix things properly when the combine goes in for its winter service.

The other breakdown we had was at the grain dryer. There are 3 diesel fired burners, but we only really use 2 as we don’t dry at high temperatures. Despite them all being service before harvest, 1 decided not to work at all, 1 decided to only start after the dryer had been running for about 20 minutes, and the other 1 sometimes started first time, sometimes not. So once you got it going in the morning, you hoped you didn’t have to stop it until either the wet bin was empty, or you were shutting it down for the night. Getting hold of an engineer to help us was a challenge, so we have nursed it through the week. Hopefully someone is coming on Monday afternoon to fix things for us.

However, when things were going, we got on really well. I’ll finish with a picture of the combine cutting winter barley with Clatto wind turbine in the background.

Harvest 17 Update: Week 1

This screen shot from the weather station pretty much describes how harvest has gone this week. As reported earlier, we cut one tankful on Sunday afternoon, and have slowly picked away at it for the rest of the week, but it hasn’t been easy.
The total amount of rain isn’t that vast (I’ve seen more than that fall in one day in the past), but it is the fact that there has been some every day. Thursday was the best day, where we cut around 30 tonnes. Yesterday (Saturday), I got 3 tonnes cut before the big showers started to hit. We had a record rain rate at about 5.30pm, but thankfully it only fell at that rate for a few seconds!
The other side effect of the poor weather is that we are chopping all the straw so far. Not much point in leaving it in the bout just for it to get soaked, and lie for a week.
The weather forecast for the coming week is better, so fingers crossed.

Complete and Total Disarray!

Same thing happens every year, and I make myself the same promises that I’ll do better for next year, only to break every last one of them. I’m talking about harvest preparations. Harvest preparations really start at the end of the previous harvest. The grain dryer needs cleaned out, the elevator boot needs cleaned out, the area around the grain pit needs swept and hoovered. Trouble is, after harvest I’m knackered, and the last thing I want to do is clear up. ‘I’ll do it later, when I’m not so busy’.
Later gets, well, later. There is the autumn sowing to be done, then we are in to winter. ‘It’s cold, I don’t want to go and clear up… I’ll do it later, when I’m not so busy’. Christmas comes and goes, and then before I know it, we are getting ready to sow the spring crops. ‘There’s too much to do, I’ll get it done when we have finished sowing, when I’m not so busy…’ You get the picture.
In my defence, this year has been a wee bit tough, and I’ve not had the time I might usually do. So if anything things were more rushed than normal. However, we have got there. Sheds are clean, elevator boot empty, dryer ready to go, combine all serviced. Just in time for the rain to come on! I managed to cut one combine tankful before the deluge this afternoon, so harvest is officially underway.