Fall Harvest

[Okrafarmer]

And I hope you know I was joking about hopping in there and driving the tractor anyway. But I was driving tractor within two weeks of breaking my left leg, while I was on internship in Australia. It was partial range power shift, thankfully, rather than full clutch-type. If I remember right, I clutched with my right foot when necessary. Thank God for flat platform / cab tractors.

My grandpa had his left leg amputated, and he still drove tractor after that-- John Deere B!  :D :D :D

Some of you will understand why that's funny.

[Carpenter]

My grandpa had his left leg amputated, and he still drove tractor after that-- John Deere B!  :D :D :D

Some of you will understand why that's funny.
[/quote]

I understand that.  I grew up driving old John Deere hand clutch tractors.  I was 19 before we got one with a foot clutch or a cab.  We used some of those old tractors for over 70 years.  I don't think the new ones last that long.

  I have been helping with fall harvest this year too.  I haven't since I was in highschool.  I usually get asked by some of the local farmers but am normally too busy this time of year.  This year I'm swamped as well but was able to push things back a few weeks and thought it would be a good change of pace.  I am helping pick ear corn.  There's not a lot of ear corn put up any more.  They've got two 6 row self propelled corn pickers running.  I'm just running grain carts back and forth it seems to be going pretty fast. 

[sandhills]

Carpenter could you post some pictures of that?  I've never heard of six row corn pickers before, are they picking it for seed corn?  There is still a few around here that pick it in the ear but only two rows at a time.  My harvest got a little better this week but mostly do to the spike in prices rather than yeild, sure hope this weather keeps up a few weeks more we're already about a month ahead of where we were last year and the wettest load of corn I've hauled so far was 12.8.  You guys can't be picking seed corn with that kind of moisture can you?  Anyhow happy harvest to all!

[Okrafarmer]

We took up about 406 bales of reclamation hay yesterday-- it's good enough quality for our goats, sheep, and donkeys.

[paul case]

now thats the kind of harvest i have experience with.

bales? small square? large square? small round? big round?   which is your size and shape?

we put up a few sm sq and quite a few lg rd(5'x5') i think this year we baled 1750 lg rd bales. mostly fescue and bermuda grass. all for our beef cows or to sell this winter.

okra,
what kind of grass was on your rec field? is that the same as what we call c.r.p.?(conservation reserve program) it is the paid not to farm ground.  pc

[Norm]

Well I'll bore you with a couple of last videos of the corn harvest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAFKdJjv7XE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv9r_m96Kyg

Thanks for your interest folks.

[beenthere]

Impressive.
Makes my leaf picking up equipment look a bit small.. ;D

How fast (mph) was the combine running? Looked to be moving right along.

Thanks for posting.

[Norm]

On this particular field the combine was averaging 4.5mph. That is kind of high as the average most times is 3.5-4.0mph but it all depends on the corn conditions. To give Diane a break with the dump cart we will follow the combine with the trailers behind the tractors. After doing that a few times I have that much more respect for Diane.

[Roxie]

This past weekend, we were at an Antique Tractor Pull, and I was describing your harvest equipment to several farmers.  They got a far away look in their eye and in a reverent tone said, "I can only imagine farming at that scale, we have nothing similar to it." 

My heart goes out to Patty, it's so hard to not be out there.  I hope she heals quickly.

What do you do with the corn fodder? 

[Okrafarmer]

now thats the kind of harvest i have experience with.

bales? small square? large square? small round? big round?   which is your size and shape? small square

we put up a few sm sq and quite a few lg rd(5'x5') i think this year we baled 1750 lg rd bales. mostly fescue and bermuda grass. all for our beef cows or to sell this winter.

okra,
what kind of grass was on your rec field? is that the same as what we call c.r.p.?(conservation reserve program) it is the paid not to farm ground.  pc

It's just a field that hasn't been maintained too well or farmed intensely for a while, so we're reclaiming it. It's 32 acres and was bought by developers :'( a few years ago to turn it into a subdivision. Thankfully for the way of agriculture and ruraldom, they weren't able to sell lot #1. (or 2, or 3, or 4, etc.) due to the Great Recession. They were losing their shirts, and wanted to put it back into agricultural use to get a break on their property taxes. So-- we are entering into a two-year contract with them-- we hay it for free. The contract helps protect our fertilizer and lime input cost if we choose to invest in it-- we probably will have it limed as soon as the rest of the hay is off. The main grass on it is fescue, with what looks like some lespedeza or other alfalfa-like legume growing in odd patches, as well as blackberries, kudzu, and many other weeds. Thankfully the weeds aren't as bad as at our other reclamation property. We use a Massey Harris 50 to mow with and do some of the raking, as needed, and a Massey Ferguson 1260 4x4 loader tractor to bale and do as much raking as possible when not baling. We use a Kuhn 5' disk mower (yes it's midget sized) which I can go in 5th gear out of 6 on the MH 50. We can only use it on that tractor because the PTO shaft is too long for the 1260. I'm hoping to get it chopped a little shorter, but it still has to be long enough to reach for the MH 50. The rake is a Ford model (I believe) 503, which is a three-point PTO beater bar rake. It is falling apart but still ticking. The baler is a Ford 532 baler and it is very finicky--I have to adjust it a lot and unfortunately I'm having a hard time getting it to make tight enough bales without breaking the twine every 4th-10th one.

Also, good help is so hard to find-- I had to adjust the length of the bales to about 2/3 the length so the help could toss them-- what ever happened to the good old days when it wasn't hard to round up half a football team to throw hay?

[Carpenter]

Carpenter could you post some pictures of that?  I've never heard of six row corn pickers before, are they picking it for seed corn?  There is still a few around here that pick it in the ear but only two rows at a time. 

   Sure, I'll try to post a picture of the corn pickers.  I hadn't seen a 6 row corn picker untill 2 days ago either.  I don't have any pictures but if I remember to take the camera I can get some.  We used to raise 40 acres of corn for cattle feed and all we ever had were 2 row pickers, and when my dad grew up all they had were 1 row pickers.  The 6 row units (and they had a name for them that I didn't catch) are self propelled.  The heads look the same as on our old 2 row pickers but I guess they can be changed to chop silage and I guess you can even get a snow blower attatchment for them.  This is regular ear corn not seed corn.  I have bought ear corn from this farm for several years.  Shelled corn looks a little better for cattle feed on paper in a feed ration but the cattle get some additional roughage and nutriants from the cob that are often overlooked, including some vitamins and calcium. 

[paul case]

hey okrafarmer,
thats just about my cup o tea also.
i would bet the ''some kind of lespedesa'' would be serica lespedesa. we have that around here in patches especially ones that go unmaintained. it will grow tall up to 3' and has 1 main stem that gets coarser when it grows taller than 6''. it has leaves like most other lespedesa's.
those knotters on the old baler must have a sharp spot on them somewhere that is cutting the string as it is tied. get out the mery cloth and clean off every spot that the twine goes against while it is tying. our old NH baler would always make a burr where the bill  hooks rubbed on the stripper arm that would cause the problem you are having. we switched to plastic twine and that made it tie better. keep in mind that most old balers were not made to make a heavy bale only about 55 pounds. good luck.  pc

[Okrafarmer]

I wish it would do 55 pounds.

[Carpenter]

     Here are some pictures of the ear corn harvest.  This may be of interest to some as there is not a lot of ear corn put up anymore.

     All of the corn was hauled out of the field with grain carts.  They work really well for this system.


      Here's a close up of one of the uni system pickers.  I guess they are called a uni system because the heads can be changed for different operations. 

     This is the small pile.  They had all three elevators running part of the time.


     We had 2 six row pickers going and at least two tractors running grain carts back and forth.  It didn't go real fast but everything was timed well enough that there was not a lot of down time for anybody.  Everything ran real smooth.   We picked a circle, 160 acres more or less, in 4 days.

[Okrafarmer]

Very nice pictures, Carpenter.

Here's my rigging I was using on the square bales.

[sandhills]

Thanks for the pictures Carpenter, I kinda figured it had to be a uni harvester or a feild queen ( I think they made something along those lines?).  Does anybody up your way chop much ear corn and pack it in wet?  We set our silage cutter up to do that and it makes really good feed, I'm with you on the cobs in the feed but the dry ear corn was kinda hard on our old grinder .

[Slabs]

Interesting.  My Dad always "snapped" corn for the cobs and shucks as filler in ground cow feed though he called it "roughage".  I've never seen a multi-row "snapper".

Thanks for the pics.  That dust on my boots is starting to "feel" again now in my golden years.

[Kansas]

Friend of mine that has a feedlot puts up silage, then also puts up earlage, as he calls it. Silage cutter just takes the ears, they harvest it like silage. Then it is ground and packed like silage seperate of the silage. Then that is used on fat cattle rations. If I remember right, he is shooting for about 25 % moisture when they pack it.

[sandhills]

Harvest is still moving along here but my neighbor hasn't beenhaving a real good day.  He is picking corn across the fence from me and was 80 or so rods away.  Now I didn't think you could stand one of those big (the biggest) JD combines on end put he tried to prove you can, almost anyway.  He found a pretty significant ditch in the feild and couldn't stop in time.  From where I was I could see the bottom of the tin work onthe rear of the combine and couldn't see the cab at all.  My dad went over with my tractor to see if he could help and a few hours later everything was moving again so mustn't have damaged anything to bad.  My wife kept my phone today to get it switched so I couldn't even get pictures :(.