OK, well some of you have said you do find my farming posts interesting so here is more.
On the plus side 4 more railcars came, they were suppose to be here MOnday morning, nope, Monday night, nope, Tuesday morning, nope, Tuesday night yes but not ont he spur line for us to load at. So Wednesday morning 10 am they were finally in the right spot. But two days lost in a holding pattern waiting for that to happen............
The cars are loaded and gone as of yesterday too. I bought a new (to me) grain truck, a 1985 IHC with a Cummins L10, wonderful engine, 300 hp and 1100 ft/lb. I can even shift without clutching after 2 days of practice which is sort of fun.
I bid on some things at an auction sale yesterday. Everything was over budget but one item, a 25' stripper header which I got for the unbelieveable price of a giveaway at $1000!
They were designed to harvest peas for the canning industry in England. As is the habit of farmers they tried it on other crops and found out it worked well. The main use I have for it besides field peas is on cereals - wheat, barley and oats although people have also used them on grass seed crops like brome and fescue.
So why use a stripper header? Well it has a huge drum with rows of "combs" along it and the combs rotate in a sweeping fashion, the stalks get caught in a "keyhole" but the head of grain itself is too big so the head gets popped off the stem and goes into the combine. But none of the straw does!! The benefits:
1)much greater combine capacity since you are not processing any straw
2)no challenges in spreading the straw at the back end of the combine since the straw is already perfectly distributed!
3)the tall straw catches snow over the winter
4)the tall straw prevents moisture evaporation in the growing season which for a dryland farmer like me is my limiting crop production factor.
And yes I've done the field scale, replicated research trials to verify the yield benefit to the subsequent crops!
I bought a stripper header, a 20' model back about 8 years ago for $8,000 which was a bargin then so you see why I am so happy with this one.
Why don't more farmers use them?
1)Seeding through the tall straw can be a challenge and you can plug your airseeder.
2)The false preception that the tall straw makes your soil cooler so crops don't grow as fast.
3)The inability to understand and recognize that moisture is our limiting factor in growing crops here.
Use of a stripper header doesn't mean we get any more rain in the growing season for example, it just means that it has more of a chance to soak into the ground since the tall stubble acts like a full sized windbreak and reduces the wind velocity at the soil surface.
Way cool!
Now to prepare for the weather today, a heavy snowfall warning, 10 cm expected, winds up to 60 km/hr..............
Cheers,
Garry
On the plus side 4 more railcars came, they were suppose to be here MOnday morning, nope, Monday night, nope, Tuesday morning, nope, Tuesday night yes but not ont he spur line for us to load at. So Wednesday morning 10 am they were finally in the right spot. But two days lost in a holding pattern waiting for that to happen............
The cars are loaded and gone as of yesterday too. I bought a new (to me) grain truck, a 1985 IHC with a Cummins L10, wonderful engine, 300 hp and 1100 ft/lb. I can even shift without clutching after 2 days of practice which is sort of fun.
I bid on some things at an auction sale yesterday. Everything was over budget but one item, a 25' stripper header which I got for the unbelieveable price of a giveaway at $1000!
They were designed to harvest peas for the canning industry in England. As is the habit of farmers they tried it on other crops and found out it worked well. The main use I have for it besides field peas is on cereals - wheat, barley and oats although people have also used them on grass seed crops like brome and fescue.
So why use a stripper header? Well it has a huge drum with rows of "combs" along it and the combs rotate in a sweeping fashion, the stalks get caught in a "keyhole" but the head of grain itself is too big so the head gets popped off the stem and goes into the combine. But none of the straw does!! The benefits:
1)much greater combine capacity since you are not processing any straw
2)no challenges in spreading the straw at the back end of the combine since the straw is already perfectly distributed!
3)the tall straw catches snow over the winter
4)the tall straw prevents moisture evaporation in the growing season which for a dryland farmer like me is my limiting crop production factor.
And yes I've done the field scale, replicated research trials to verify the yield benefit to the subsequent crops!
I bought a stripper header, a 20' model back about 8 years ago for $8,000 which was a bargin then so you see why I am so happy with this one.
Why don't more farmers use them?
1)Seeding through the tall straw can be a challenge and you can plug your airseeder.
2)The false preception that the tall straw makes your soil cooler so crops don't grow as fast.
3)The inability to understand and recognize that moisture is our limiting factor in growing crops here.
Use of a stripper header doesn't mean we get any more rain in the growing season for example, it just means that it has more of a chance to soak into the ground since the tall stubble acts like a full sized windbreak and reduces the wind velocity at the soil surface.
Way cool!
Now to prepare for the weather today, a heavy snowfall warning, 10 cm expected, winds up to 60 km/hr..............
Cheers,
Garry
A bit frustrating at the time but funny now.
