Crimson Clover Harvest

As I said last week in my blog, ready or not…harvest is here! We started crimson clover harvest this past week, and we should hopefully finish up in a few days. We had about 140 acres this year, and it will take us about 5 to 6 days to finish it all up. For all you farmers who think that is a really long time to take to combine…in our own defense we had a bunch of small fields in crimson this year. Which means you can’t be nearly as efficient as you would like. More corners in the field means more time turning and less time harvesting. And believe me, it all adds up! Still it is wild to think that this crop was planted last fall. We took 10 months worth of cultivation, scouting for disease & pests, fertilizing, spraying, walking fields again…all just to take only a few days to get the whole crop in and off the land.This is the view from the cab of the windrow going into the header of the combine. Crimson Clover is really really dusty and the dust is really really itchy!! Makes me glad every year that we have combines with cabs, unlike the “good ol’ days!” Although if you’re like me and out in the field instead of in the cab…you still get that good itchy feeling every time you work on a machine! You can say after a day of harvest there is no water wasted on me!This is the view looking from the inside of the combine out the back window into the grain tank. The seed is brought up through the header, the material is then rubbed together with the straw and the seed falls out of the bell shaped casing it has around it. Then the seed is augered up into the grain tank, where it will be them be dumped into a truck and taken to get cleaned and bagged.This is what the clover seed looks like, the golden colored seed is what we are after. The off type colors are usually under developed seeds. Also you can see that we didn’t quite get all the bell shaped casing out, those are the larger fury parts in my hand.So just a few more days and we’ll be all finished up with our second crop. First Peas, now crimson and next up perennial grass seed. Hope everyone has a great week!