Also when your header is worth around $700k you tend to want to care for it much like it’s a Lamborghini!Īfter that, the farmer puts the plough on the tractor and breaks up the stubble of the stalks to cover the soil. Any remnants of grain will attract mice, and since it’s organic there’s no pesticides or poisons that you can use to keep them away. Its necessary to clean and service the header immediately. I thought that at this point the farmer might get to sit down for a hard earned beer, or perhaps pack his bags for a holiday, but it’s not over yet. You can follow the next steps by watching video 1 of our Tour of the Mill. And once that’s fully loaded it will drive the 170km to deliver it directly to the Kialla mill. From here it is delivered straight into the truck. The collected grain is augured into a field bin. The grain is transferred from the bin to the truck The straw goes back into the field where it will later be ploughed back into the soil. This causes the grain to separate from the stalks and fall through into a collection bin. The cutter, in the front of the header, chops the stalks which then get fed into the thresher where they are broken and rubbed, using what is essentially a large drum with little teeth that crush the wheat stalks against a mesh screen. So, when it comes to the technical side, what’s the harvesting process?
At this rate, they can harvest up to 170 hectares a day. On many farms, especially the larger ones, the harvesting crew can work all night, or at least til 2am when the dew comes in and dampens the crop until the sun’s heat dries it again. Rob can expect 2 days of harvesting work, and it’ll be a late night. He’s expecting to average about 1 tonne per hectare, but in a good year, a hectare could grow as much as 2 and a half tonnes of wheat. We had an excess of rain earlier in the year, but it’s been a dry few months since. This is not necessarily going to be a good yield, as the weather has been pretty sporadic. For his estimated 200 tonne harvest he’ll use 2 semi-trailer trucks, each with 2 large trailers. So Rob will be out around 8.30am in his header, his trucks lined up and ready to go. Once it gets to that point a perfectly good crop can be ruined. There is already a bit of urgency in the harvest as the wet season is fast approaching and all the farmers need to ensure their crops are out before the rains come. The header is ready on the morning of the harvest. For this reason, if it rains the day before, this can put the kibosh on the harvest, which will need to be postponed until the crop has thoroughly dried off. The plants also need to be thoroughly dry so that the wheat grain can be cleanly separated from the chaff.
Once the stalks get moist this can make them very tough to harvest – as you’ll notice with any plant in your garden, once it’s wet, it’s harder to break.
The farmer needs to wait until the sun is high enough to dry the dew that has settled on the plants overnight. Harvest morning on the Downs is not too early a start. In Rob’s case his cropping area is not large enough to warrant this so the trucks, once loaded, will be going straight to Kialla’s mill. Those with larger farms tend also to have onsite storage so that if enough trucks aren’t available when it’s time to harvest, the grain can be stored on the farm. In Rob’s case, he has his own harvesting machine (called a ‘header’) so when he’s ready to harvest he simply has to book the trucks that will be taking the grain to the mill. It’s likely that the farmer made a tentative booking with his contract harvester, right back when he planted the wheat some 4 months ago. The grains of wheat are released and he can then bite them – if they’re hard, the crop is ready to go. When the crop has dried to a golden yellow colour and there is no more visible green in it, the farmer breaks the seed-head off a plant and ‘rubs it out’ between his hands.
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