Where that food comes from…

Discussion in 'Food and Wine' started by 557, Oct 22, 2021.

  1. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    Do corks help at all with mosquitoes or just flies? I’ll admit to wearing my bee veil a few times irrigating to keep the mosquitoes out of my eyes and ears. LOL
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
  2. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    That's not all your corn is it?
    I know you farm on a whole different scale to us but that must be a hundred farms worth.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
  3. politicalcenter

    politicalcenter Well-Known Member

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    It looks a lot like corn.
     
  4. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    I've had a shocking day.
    Or should I say a day shocking.
    First time I've helped with this stage of the process.
    Simple enough.
    You built the shocks on the middle row of 5.
    The reaper binder goes around the field in a clockwise direction so you shock in the opposite direction so the sheaves lay the right way around to pick up.
    You pick up a sheave under each arm making sure the knot is on the inside and lean them against each other with the grain on top and the base about a pace apart.
    Each shock is 5 pairs and you add 2 pairs each side of the first pair leaning slightly inward to make them a bit sturdier in the wind.
    You then move up the middle row and start again.
    You pick up all 5 rows as you progress and when you get to the end of the row you turn left and carry on.
    It's easier to do it in pairs so you can lean weight on both ends at once rather than risk knocking it over.

    That's about it.
    I thought it would be my back or knees that felt the pain but it was more calves and hips.
    My soft chef's hands would have found it easier with some work gloves on as the string starts to rub on your fingers after a while.
    Straw is sharp too. You can't do it in shorts and t-shirt or you get slashed to pieces. Even through a layer of clothing my belly has small cuts all over it.
    It was hot again today too. About 30 C so a thick top wasn't ideal.
    Luckily the breeze was strong enough to blow my hat off a couple of times.
    Without a rucksack or bag of some kind you can't carry your drink as you go along either. I put mine in the middle of a shock to keep the sun off it thinking I could have a drink on the next time around,
    Unfortunately I never found it again. One shock looks much like another and I couldn't remember which one it was in. :)
    That won't turn up again until we cart the wheat in about a week.
    Two of us did maybe an acre and a half in around 5 hrs.
    On a cooler day we could have done a bit more.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
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  5. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    No, not all mine. I raise between 80,000 and 100,000 bushels of corn annually. Those piles I believe are somewhere around 2 million to 2.5 million bushels when full. That depends on the test weight of the corn (weight/volume of grain).

    There are farms in the area that could fill one or more of those bunkers annually though. :)
     
  6. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    My dad grew something when I was very young to make sorghum syrup out of. I assume it was sugar cane or something similar but I don’t really know. He spent all summer growing it. He spent a day with a mill he borrowed extracting the “juices” which amounted to about 10 gallons. My mom spent a day and a half cooking it down to a few pints of syrup. She told my dad if he ever grew it again she would leave. LOL.

    He never mentioned growing any again.

    I don’t remember much about what it looked like but I remember chewing on a stem and it was sweet.
     
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  7. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    Thanks. That’s very interesting for those of us who will probably never have the opportunity to experience history like you do. :)

    Can the size/weight of the sheaves be changed much by adjusting the binder? I assume there is an ideal size to facilitate stability yet still allow for best drying?

    I’d have to have gloves. I can buck a few small square bales without gloves but it doesn’t take long to wear off a bunch of skin. Does the binder use a sisal (natural fiber) type string/twine or something synthetic?

    The water jug part cracked me up. Sounds like something I’d do in the heat of battle. Maybe carry a flag to mark your shock …
    B156C0C0-F1EE-407A-85CB-990EB1D81425.jpeg
     
  8. daisydotell

    daisydotell Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It is kind of fun watching the hay baler drop the hay..it almost looks like it is laying an egg. That would be my description. lol.
     
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  9. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    I don’t get to see that often. You have me at a disadvantage. From the tractor you can barely see the bale through the gaps in the baler belts well enough to tell if it ejected or not. :) I go by feel more than anything. The bar that pushes the bale away from the baler exerts force strong enough to move the tractor and baler a tiny bit forward. If you don’t feel that you know something has gone wrong and needs investigated.
     
  10. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    The binder might be adjustable for sheave size. I'd have to ask.
    It probably works by volume like the buncher. The buncher has a toothed wheel which turns as the straw passes over it. After a certain amount of rotations it triggers the knotting mechanism. To make the bunches heavier you can compress it a bit more by winding down the large wingnuts on the clamp type thing the straw is fed through.
    All very Heath Robinson.
    Most of what Paul does when he is sitting on the binder is raise and lower the sail, the blade and the point the sheave is knotted to compensate for the small undulations in the field.

    Yes the twine is sisal. I just lit the end of a bit I picked up to be sure, Definitely not nylon or similar by the smell.

    The drink's loss could have been avoided if I'd been wearing the traditional farmer's red neckerchief. I could have marked the location with that.
    The worst thing was Paul told me where to leave it so I would pass it by the time I was really thirsty but I chose to carry it to where I started stacking.
    This meant I ended up walking the longest distance possible when I needed it. One corner to the other diagonally across a ten acre field and right past Paul on the binder in the middle to compound my embarrassment. :oops:
    Plus I had to walk all the way back, empty handed and twice as thirsty, when I couldn't find it. :(
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
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  11. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for the update.

    The water thing is actually serious business in that heat doing that kind of work. When I forget and leave my water jug in a tractor or something and end up somewhere else without it in the heat I think I’m fine. But I get dehydrated and end up paying for it sometimes many hours later with a headache. The things dehydration does to our bodies we don’t notice are even worse. It messes up our immune system and makes things hard on our livers and kidneys etc.

    Oh, my neighbors have their wheat all harvested now. My friend had some irrigated that made 55bushels/acre which is about half what he usually gets on irrigated. The hail was disastrous. Dry land for him made 13 bu/ac (also hail) and this field I watched them harvest while I cultivated beans the other day made 10-11 bu/ac.
    216BCEBB-686F-4FA2-A763-D9BD2C142B5E.jpeg

    In not even sure who farms that field now, it changes often. But the farmer gossip network supplied me with a yield figure anyway. LOL. It’s a 275 acre field. They spent all day harvesting and ended up with two 1500 bu grain carts of wheat.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
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  12. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    Paul aims for about 20 acres of thatching straw.
    It's as much as they can really cut, shock, cart, stack, thresh and stack again by hand. It's very labour intensive for the modest yield.
    This year only about 15 acres grew tall enough for thatch and the rest will just be combined. The dry spring being the main culprit.
    Same thing happened last year and the thatchers will struggle to get enough straw again.
     
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  13. daisydotell

    daisydotell Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Do you grow pintos and great northern beans?
     
  14. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    I have to do the conversion to tons to understand that.
    3000 bushels is about 90 tons?
    That's really poor for 275 acres.
    Even with our low yield Victorian long straw varieties we get about a ton an acre.
     
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  15. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    Sorry, I should have been more clear. In local vernacular, “beans” is always soybeans. That’s the only bean grown here. You have to go west up into the panhandle of Nebraska to find “dry edible beans” like pinto etc.

    Our weather is too wet and humid to harvest other beans correctly. Sorry about that!
     
  16. Melb_muser

    Melb_muser Well-Known Member Donor

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    I've actually never tried it for mosquitoes, because they come in the cooler evening and I'm not wearing a hat then.

    Aussie mosquitoes rarely go for the face - you must have some hardcore mozzies in your area!
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
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  17. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    Yep it’s an atrocious yield. It would have been better if the hail would have totaled the crop. Most people carry crop insurance that would have been more profitable if the crop was a complete loss because there would have been no harvest expense.

    On dry land here we expect at least 40 bu/ac which would be 1.2 ton/ac if my math is correct. LOL. Irrigated should be 90+bu/ac or 2.7 ton/ac.

    You use a 2000 lb ton and 60 lb/bu test weight for wheat as standards, correct?
     
  18. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    It depends on the weather. A big rain with no rain after it will produce mosquitoes in standing water. Regular rain disrupts the life cycle that requires stagnant water. Very dry weather and virtually no mosquitoes.
     
  19. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    We just use tonnes and kilos.
    I never hear Paul use bushels as a measurement.
    A tonne is 2,200 lbs.
    According to this it's just under 37 bushels to the ton which is 27kg (60 lb) a bushel.
    https://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app19/calc/crop/bushel2tonne.jsp
    For small sacks of grain Paul works in stones and CWTs because that's what his old kit weighs it out in.
    He's got an antiquated dressing machine which raises the clean wheat with an auger to a hopper with a tipping mechanism which counts the number of times a stone (14 lb) drops into the sack below.

    You can tell the age of a bit of kit by which wrenches you need to fix it. That one is definitely Whitworth scale not Imperial or metric.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
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  20. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Haha.
     
  21. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    Nobody has asked why the knots have to be on the inside of the shook.
     
  22. 557

    557 Well-Known Member

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    I’ll bite. I would do it to protect them from the elements but just instinctively . Could be a reason I’m not thinking of.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2022
  23. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    I would have taken a while to guess it.
    The way the binder works you end up with one side of the sheave having more grain and the other more straw. It is also slightly curved.
    You put the straw side out because the water runs off it instead of into the shock if it rains.
    The knot is always on the grain side. Usually the knot is facing up when it lays on the ground.
     
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  24. Montegriffo

    Montegriffo Well-Known Member

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    Not that rain is going to be a problem with this year's harvest.

    No grain dryer on the farm so it has to dry in the field. Otherwise you have to pay for the drying at the granary.
    The straw is remarkably resilient to getting wet though and dries very quickly when it does.
    Which is why it's used for roofing after all.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2022
  25. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    My mom said they used to make maple syrup when she was a kid and it took forever. She said it seemed like you needed 50 gallons of sap to render one pint of syrup.
     
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