You would think this is a good complaint; that we have a huge crop; but no, it's just an average crop but we've had several weather interruptions.
Thunder storms this year have meant several breaks of several days to a week where we couldn't reap. When you deliver grain to the silo's, it must be a certain moisture level (which varies for each grain/legume), so when we have rain, we can't reap the crop until it's dry enough.
Our Barley yield this harvest has been very good, but the quality of the grain has not, we've been delivering Feed 2 and Feed 3 (F2 & F3), but the price hasn't been much lower than the Feed 1 grade, so it's not all bad.
Dust coming up over the hill. This is how I know where hubby is working, from the dust
Windrowed Barley on the ground takes longer to dry out after rain than standing crop
Header box is almost full, you can see the gold coloured grain up on top
Always make sure you stand on the right side of the wind, otherwise you will be covered in grain dust, which is quite itchy, especially Buloke Barley - that's some itchy shit!!!
The 'pick up' is attached to the front of the header. It's like a conveyor belt that picks up the rows of Barley and feeds them into the header.
If you look closely, you'll see 'Farmer 5' in the cab with Dad
'Farmer 5' learning his '3 points of contact' while disembarking
'Farmer 5' has had enough for today, lunchbox is empty too
Hubby nearly stepped on this snake when he got out of the header. Luckily Farmer 5 was not there then. It swiftly met with a shovel and went to greener pastures.
