We have a fairly large program in Montana this year, and while travelling up with the cone drill, we spotted this guy outside of Bozeman. No, we did not stop to pick him up. (thanks to Mike Beevers of Cal Ag Research for pointing this fellow out to us).
Once we arrived in Montana, this is what our plots looked like... this is at the Eddies corner trial site, but the others in Malta and Sun River looked about the same. We did not see any differences among any of our variety nor fertilizer nor seed treatment trials in regards to the amount of snow cover on the plots.
Meanwhile back in Yuma we were hitting 90 degree weather, even kissing 100 a couple of days... You would think that this would push the wheat along, but it did not... by the 10th or so we were able to get in and start slowly... things were PLENTY wet... most of the early samples had to be left out to air dry. Despite the way it may look here, Isaiah is NOT trying to dry out the plot with a leaf blower.... but there were times when it seemed like a good idea....
Besides moisture, we also had bird issues at one of our farms, so we dragged out our bird netting and put it up over the the trial in the way of the flock... it is much more enjoyable to shoot the damn things, but one can only have so much fun... Putting up this kind of netting works well, and there is a certain amount of pleasure to be had watching the red-winged blackbirds frantically trying to get through the nets... if you decide you would like to make a blackbird pie, let us know and we will go get 4 and twenty for you...
This year we took on a larger project with involved several one hectare breeder seed plots. Since the seed was due for export to Canada, we needed to clean it as well, which for the small cleaners normally found at a facility such as ours, cleaning 70,000 pounds of seed requires some new thinking. While in Montana dropping off equipment, I stumbled across an older Clipper Super 49BD thanks to the great assistance of our friend Ernest Bergsagel. Ernest tracked down some motors and had some augers made, and the set up is as you can see at the right...
But getting this beast out of the snow and onto a trailer proved challenging... it weighs 3000 pounds or so... as I was leaving Montana, I pulled into one cooperating Farmers yard, and Paul asks "You been robbing the Smithsonian?" I felt redeemed when I got to Great Falls and another Farmer, Chuck says "A 49! We have a 57 we use all the time (the 57 is the next bigger size).
This machine will handle better than 100 bu an hour, but not with us running it at the moment. It does a decent job, and once we get it fully setup, it will be excellent. Interestingly, this series was manufactured from 1938 to 1967. Ours was made in 1950. The parts guy at AT Ferrell, told me that he sells $120,000 dollars a month in parts for these "old" cleaners, shipping them all over the world. All of the pieces I asked him about he had in stock... The Clipper brand, and AT Ferrell have always been well respected, and I can see why... we have one of their desktop cleaners.. it will handle about 30 pounds an hour (and it cost us $2,300 new 10 years ago), but it has always been a good machine.
But we still need to get the crop off, so we fitted Aiavata (our name for our bigger combine) with a pickup header and had the fields wind-rowed commercially, rigged up a transport system with Supersacks and stared to it... Not fast compared to the big machines of today, but it does Okay. The tank holds 3600 pounds or so of wheat, so we are able to get most of an acre with this early terminated and shortchanged wheat---which is intentional since we are trying to get it harvested early and shipped for seeding in the Northern part of the continent... the trade off is yield, and I should add, ease of harvest and cleaning.And of course... we have had some fun weather...
Nothing like a little breeze on a spray day...
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