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Through Ol's eyes in NZ. updated 4/june/14


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Alass a hail storm and 45mm of rain the night before signel the start of harvest. Cutting the frist paddock of 100ha of rye grass seed. Some farmers like to use a swather others a disc mower for grass seed, these krone mowers do at less damageto the seed than other brands of mower and are cheaper to run than swather so my boss uses this set up and gets a contractor to do the rape swathing.

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Not to bad Pat,just flick 2 of the paddels and up they pop while the GPS keeps each bout the same and the mowers full. The front mower gives problems on the headland cuts and will block if you hit a patch of weeds but that's just the nature of whats being cut. It's almost 4am and can hear her warming up outside my door as you often cut the grass seed early in the morning when the plants are abit tougher so the seed stays on the stem beter.

You will drive this tractor when your here Pat.:)

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Had a good poke round on google maps. Can't beleive how green it is on there, looks just lke round us (well when its not covered in snow) Looking forward to a go on the NH, only ever driven a 8240 and a ts1115a before

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A lot of cutting this week. Myself cutting grass seed with the tractor and 2 swathing contractors have been busy cutting the crops that need to lay in windrows too dry down. As theres not realy a huge amount of demand for swathing due to some bigger farms buying there own and some of the smaller farms having changed from arable to dairy farming plus a bit of reduction in the area of crops needing to be windrowed now days my boss shears the work around alittle to help 2 rather than 1 contractor out with the added bouns of keeping them on there toes. :police:

 

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  • 1 month later...

Few pictures to update my thread :)

 

Last of the grass seed has been cut and combined along with the OSR.

 

Growing seed crops for export helps the family farm I work on stay competitive against the big boys.Seed companys here like Case IH rotarys for there gentle grain on grain thrashing on there breeding stock lines of seed. Most of the grass seed and seed OSR will end up in England I'm told in time for the English growing season.

With the male rows of rape mulched down after flowing (25% of the paddock) and the female beds windrowed to dry down the rape was ready and yielded 4.5 T/ha. With the price of the crops and compaction in mind we unload into trucks on the headlands before the seed is taken off to be dressed.

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Plenty of grass seed means plenty of straw,another local farmer with a 6920 bales the straw and carts what he needs back to his farm while the rest is sold to dairy farmers all over the south island.

Like in Canada the "pick up" front is used for most of the harvest exp for cereals.This stony paddock yielded 8T/ha of feed barley witch was ok for a paddock that only got 1 irragtion.

The nice thing about family farms I find is working together,They loan us there 6530 while we loan them an extra augar when needed. 

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Interesting update Ol, does the draper header leave much seed on the ground

No Pat,the seed on the ground is knocked out by the wind more often than not.

 

Nice update, Ol. Those look like pretty big swaths of rape you're squeezing in there!

Yes they are John,at times they bulldoze infront of the pick up no mater what you do.

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2.5 km/hour is about it mate,We most here cut with a disc mower set up for doing grass seed so you get a nice flat swath that drys fast and is safe from the wind. These irragted crops are pushed hard with a lot of inputs (more than milling wheat) and are laying flat in a mess so direct combining wouldn't work realy.

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  • 4 months later...

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A local contractors kit,he makes around around the area with his very after market/just right for the combine harvesting vegetable seeds that you don't want broken/split with a standard combine.

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Next doors wee fleet parked up for the weekend,hence the best time to get a loan of a trailer.

 

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Site works for our new shed,ended up pulling each truck on and then out again.

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Ah Olly good to see some stubble burning great for keeping the weed at bay and I found out this year in the veg garden my dad and I burned a few small square bales of straw on in and there very little weeds on the ground and good bit of potash for spuds :D 

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