Our barley is grown for malting.  The malted barley is then used to make beer, candy, pet food, and some other foods and beverages.  This year, over half of our acres are planted to barley, and our custom farming acres are barley also.  That means we have over 1,200 acres of barley to harvest, which is right around the corner and I can not wait!!

It all starts with the newest member of our equipment family- the no-till drill. We are so happy we purchased this drill this spring! No-till means that we do not have to do any tillage prior to drilling.  It has special disks that cut through any residue left in the field. No-till is very beneficial for the soil and maintains the moisture already in the soil. We were able to drill almost all of our barley directly into this moisture which gives it a head start.

No-till Drill

Since we drilled most of the barley in the moisture, it almost all came up without having to be irrigated. Some of our fields our irrigated with water that comes out of a canal. It is quite a while after we are done drilling before we can irrigate from the canal, so it really helps the barley crop when it can use the moisture in the soil to get started.  If the soil was dried up from tillage, it would not start growing until we could irrigate it, which could be up to a month after we drill it.

I absolutely love this picture my hubby took one morning as the sun was rising!!

Barley beauty in the morning

Here are some close up pictures of the barley heads and beards.

Barley beards

Barley heads

As the barley is finishing up, it starts to change from green to golden.

Barley starting to change

Once all of the barley is golden and the kernels are dried down, it is time to harvest!  Stay tuned to see what we do to get the combine ready for barley harvest as harvest will be starting within the next week. Woohoo!!