How agriculture works thread

[ArlyA]

I am a little familiar with some of the 9000 series Deeres and was surprised to learn they hold around 400 gallons. That's over a $1,200 fill-up when you're on "E".

Not sure how long that lasts but generally a tractor holds enough for a long day of work in the field. I think the biggest Deeres use 25-30-33 gallons an hour.

They are BIG machines. Next time I'm home, I'll try get photos of the ones my brother-in-law has.

I should add that I'm glad this thread staying about the ag business.

 

[Jstpssng]

We don't have the grain farms which they do out west but we do have potato farms. When a harvestor moves... traffic doesn't. What's really fun though is getting behind one of the row crop sprayers moving from field to field. They set so high a motorcycle could ALMOST drive underneath them.

 

[ArlyA]

Kate in Montana was moved into a 970's JD combine this year. They started harvesting there wheat about 4 days ago.

 

[sixdogs]

Lots of people don't know this but each strand of the silk on corn connects to an individual kernel on the ear of corn. And corn is wind pollinated so if low wind or planted in a protected area that blocks the wind, pollination suffers and you wind up with one of those ears with disjointed, odd looking or missing rows of kernels.

Here's a pic of corn that was poorly pollinated.

 

[ArlyA]

I'm getting to like Kate in Montana videos. Her editing is great! They loose a combine and she interviews the JD repair guy workig on it.

 

[Jstpssng]

It's really not what the OP is referring to, but today I was in the grocery store looking at the desiccated corn they were selling. Until the chain was bought out by some foreign company, they used to bring in local produce which even had it's own section. As I looked at the dried silk I thought "I know where I can get some REAL corn." On the way home I stopped by a stand where he goes out in the morning to pick what he's going to sell today.

AH, it's on the stove and as I wrote this I started smelling the fresh corn... nothing says "summer" better.

 

[ArlyA]

Any see any harvesting going on by them?

 

[ptsg]

It's tomato harvest season here in Portugal, so here is a Fendt 828 pulling a trailer fully loaded.

 

[Jstpssng]

I never thought, I should have taken a picture of them harvesting low bush blueberries in the field in back of me. They had two good sized Kubotas with harvesters on front, and cleared a 15 acre field in about 4 days.

 

[jjp8182]

On that note I may need to try and remember to snap a few pictures in a few months when cotton harvest starts if I see anything while driving by the cotton fields .... fascinating to see the different methods of how that's harvested along with how it's been changing in the last several years (particularly to someone like myself who hasn't grown up in the area).

The older-style harvesters just pick the cotton and off-load it into a tractor-pulled cart/boll buggy which in turn dumps into a module builder that compresses the cotton into large rectangular modules (look almost like 20ft ISO containers sitting in the fields).

However, the newer machines harvest and compress it all in a single machine that drops a round bale/module that's roughly 8ft wide and (up to) 8ft diameter and wrapped around the circumference (only) in plastic.

Can be rather impressive to drive by some of the local cotton gins around harvest time - both as the yards fill with bales/modules, and as they rapidly get processed and the yards get emptied.

Not really much going on in northern Alabama right now (at least not that I've seen) in the way of planting or harvesting ....other than hay of course. Winter wheat was all harvested in the last couple months, and corn still has a bit of drying out to do before it's harvested ...and the cotton fields look live they've just started to blossom out (some look to have taller plants than I've seen...possibly ever since moving to Alabama).