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Archived News
21st August 2016
Harvesting the earlier variety of Skyfall wheat has been completed. It's been quite a dusty harvest but yesterday's rain may dampen things down a little.
The team work both day and night to get the harvest in, until the crop becomes damp with dew.
The combine harvester moved into the Crusoe milling wheat on Thursday and cut a couple of circuits of the field but as the wheat wasn't quite fit (ready) harvesting was paused, with another 200 acres of wheat still to go. This is the later variety we have grown over the past year.
The straw is baled, then stacked on a trailer and moved back from the fields to barns for storage.
Straw bales are loaded onto a trailer in the field.
Transporting the bales back to one of the barns.
Unloading straw bales at the farm.
Storing straw for use over the coming months.
The straw is used as bedding for the Friesian cattle at certain times during their time here.
Friesian calves come to us at about ten days old from dairy farms and they start off in barns where they have a self-service milk machine as well as a feed we mix here on the farm. They will be housed until they are turned out in the spring when grass is growing and then return to barns to overwinter again when there's insufficient grass.
Other field work is continuing where harvest is completed. Further mole draining in clay fields that have been prone to water-logging, followed by cultivation and rolling.
Tractor pulling the moler through the soil which in effect creates a slit through the clay.
We grew peas last year which were bought for tinning and whilst Laurence found the crop quite challenging to harvest, the job was done with a conventional combine header.
However this year quite an area of peas were flattened by rain so we decided to search for a specialist header for the combine harvester called a raking pick-up, either to hire or buy. It seems that other farmers were in a similar situation and contacting agricultural machinery suppliers but struggling to find anything available.
We found a raking pick-up for sale in the centre of France, still in use and completing a pea harvest there. The farmer sent us a film of the header in action and after some discussion, technical questions and looking at possible transportation the deal was done and by Saturday morning a Polish lorry arrived here in Surrey with our new purchase on board.
The pea harvester is revealed
The lorry drivers were helpful and professional and after completing our delivery were heading back to Europe to transport carpet on their return journey.
Lots of straps and strops were used to spread the load and lift carefully off the lorry
It was a relief once safely on the ground.
