Still Barley Harvest

I am happy to say that we are almost done with barley harvest! We have just a little over 100 acres left.  If our equipment and the weather would cooperate, that would only be another day and a half.  However, it is raining at the moment so we will just see how it goes.  Some barley fields in the area were almost completely hailed out, so I am not complaining since I know it could be a lot worse!     

This barley harvest has been interesting.  Our main delay has been equipment breakdowns.  Our new combine had a major mechanical issue, but we were lucky our local dealer had a combine on the lot that we are using to finish up. 

I wanted to share some pictures of our barley harvest journey this far.

Barley ready to be harvested

Combining the barley

On this field, we windrowed the straw so that our landlord could bale it. 

Straw windrows

Our landlord baled it into small bales, and then grouped a bunch of small bales together to make one big bale. This is nice because it makes it easier to transport, but also makes it manageable once it gets to its final destination.

Small bales banded into one large bale

Here are some pictures of the combine.  The left picture is the cab of the combine. Two of my favorite features of the cab are the mini refrigerator and the XM radio.  When you spend long hours in the combine, these two things really come in handy! 🙂 The right picture is the grain tank which is where the clean grain is stored until it is unloaded into the grain cart or the truck.

And here is the final product-barley!

Barley in the truck

Barley close-up

Click here to see the photos of our barley crop from start to finish.