Defoliation

     The alfalfa seeds are fully formed and ready to be harvested!

     See how the pods are all dry? Now can you also see how the leaves are not dry? That's a problem, because (as I said yesterday) green and soggy plants tend to gum up machinery. Those leaves need to dry out, and fast. So farmers will use a chemical defoliant for the job.

     Defoliants dry out out plants. And in a matter of days it turns the above plants into these:

     Now that they're all brown and crispy, they'll run through a combine quite nicely. That's an article for a later time, though. A surprising amount of the alfalfa survives this and will begin growing anew, so combining will follow shortly. I'll get that post to you soon enough. Have a lovely Wednesday.

Combean

     Remember where we left the beans?

     Drying in windrows. Plants that are too wet have a tendency to plug machinery up. You may have come across this mowing a lawn. Anyhow, now many of the beans are dry.

     That means it's time to combine them! A bean combine is a similar machine to the combine that cuts pretty much everything else. There are a few notable differences, though. Beans are fragile and so in order to keep them from breaking, a lot of the machinery is different. You'll see a belt instead of an auger offload the beans for instance. (Some have a nifty bin that tips over and just pours the beans out.)

     Another is the header. This is a pickup header, and as you might have presumed, it picks stuff up. More specifically it picks up plant material. In this case bean plant material, but you knew that already...

     The beans then go on the trucks. From there the process works like any other harvest; They will go to a facility for storage, or strait onto the market to be enjoyed by people. (Maybe even you!)

Smut

     Don't worry blogger, I'm not about to go back on our little agreement. This is a different kind of smut! It lives out in the corn...

     I'm sure a great many of you can imagine a multitude of horrors lurking in the dark depths of a corn field, so you may be disappointed to see this...

     This is corn smut. See how it grows out of the ears? Long story short, smut is a fungus and it invades the kernels and replaces them with bulby things.

     There they are. They will eventually fill full of spores, but these are still growing. Some folks eat these, and in Mexico there is a long culinary tradition with them that goes back to the Aztecs. They called them "huitlacoche." I ate the little one up there. I'm still alive. It didn't taste like much at all, a little cornesque perhaps. That said, I'm not going back for more.

     Smut invariably destroys corn and can be quite a problem in a field. It has decent nutritional characteristics when young, but will mostly dry out into skin and spores later in the year. So what do farmers do about it? Not much, because there isn't much you can do. Fortunately its not very virulent and won't cause too much harm. And I suppose you could eat them, if you wanted...

A Differant Harvest

     It's not so much a different harvest as a different being that's doing the harvesting.

     This is a Muskrat and it has taken up residence in a local sediment pond. Have I mentioned sediment ponds before?

     A sediment pond (shown above) collects the waste water at the bottom of the field and slows it or stops it so that the sediment (dirt) can sink to the bottom. This helps to curb erosion of top soils. On the far bank, in the middle of the picture, you can see a place where a couple of cattails are knocked over. The entrance to the muskrats den is right there under the water.
     As I watched the muskrat it would swim up the ditch that fed the pond and return shortly with bunches of plants, mostly oats (uprooted) from the filter strip of the field.

     After 30 minutes of laying in the dirt and holding real still I was able to get these photos. Unfortunately my camera didn't like looking into the relatively dark hole so the pictures are a bit blurry.

     This time the critter dragged a corn stalk back home. He must have gathered enough for lunch because he didn't return. Note the fearsome claws. Don't worry, they're only for digging.

     Farmers aren't the only ones harvesting their crops. There's always some sort of animal munching on the crops. This makes the muskrat a bit of a pest, but the most damage they can do is by accident. Sometimes their burrows and dens can cause washouts of ditches and canals. All in all, I don't think this one is much of a danger though, as it seems to like the oats the most, leaving the corn alone for the most part.
     Have a great weekend folks. I think I'll go work on my wildlife photography a bit more...

Slow News Day

     When I went out looking for pictures last night and this morning I didn't find much...

     A whole lot of this... Exciting right? Actually it's not so bad as that. This recently disced, (the spell checker doesn't think that's a word) or tilled if you like, field is just where the rest of the wheat stubble is headed.

     A dozen of these hawks were illustrating why rodents need to breed to prolifically. Without the hay to hide them, no small animal is safe from those exceptionally sharp eyes. (and talons, they're sharp too)

     Everything is growing and seeding and such. And for the most part, that's what farming is still about these days. We've not even finished the second harvest, after all. Soon the scales will tip towards more harvesting, but for now it's still mostly water, weeds, and bugs.

Cutting Beans

     I finally got some pictures of Beans being cut!

     Here is just one of many different configurations of bean cutters. I'll walk you through some of the basics.

     In the very front you'll see these tines. Some varieties of bean cutter also have large blades here that cut the beans, but this one uses a different method. These tines lift and separate the plants so that the stems are exposed. They also clear a path so that the wheels aren't running over anything valuable.

     In the back of this setup you have the rake. The rake picks up the plants and puts them into a windrow. Some configurations put the cutter and rake on different tractors entirely, but in the case of this machine, the cutter is on the rake.

     Towards the middle of this picture you can see two parallel bars. These bars turn and as they are pulled across at ground level they lift the bean plants out of the ground.

     Once the beans are in their windrows, they need to dry out, so they'll sit in them until they do.
     I finally got another full length post up! Stay tuned to learn the fate of the beans and more about agriculture in general.

Off Day

     Hey folks, I can't really do a post this morning as I'm needed elsewhere. Instead all I have it this stock photo I took of a Milk Weed.

     It's not very "weedy" as far as weeds go. This one has full pods. Soon they'll open to let the seeds out.
     Sorry for the shorty today. See you back here tomorrow.

What Is Happening

     You may recall that I alluded to the fact that I meant to have an article about cutting beans today. I may have been a bit premature on that...

     Because while there are a few bean fields that are cut, the majority remains standing. (In case you were wondering: That row in the middle up there is somebody's sweet corn for eating.)

     A great deal of the farmers of the area are still harvesting wheat or dealing with the stubble. A few will burn the stubble, but most as the field above, will disc the stubble under. Either way the field will be irrigated afterwords.

     Stock always needs this or that. Why this lady is out walking her horses, I do not know. I did make a nice picture, I think.

     Who can identify these tracks? (That odd ring of light is just a reflection off the lens of my camera.) Most animals make a great effort to remain unseen so they can avoid being eaten. They do leave a lot of tracks, though.

     I may have jumped the gun a bit on the bean harvest, (or rather the article about the bean harvest) but there's always a lot going on in agriculture. The bean harvest will gain more momentum quite soon and hopefully I'll be able to get some good pictures of beans being cut.
     Have a great Monday!

On Beans

     Autumn is rapidly approaching, and with it comes the next harvest here in Owyhee County.

     Though they were one of the latest crops to be planted, beans are ripening well before many others.

     When the leaves dry up and fall off, it's the beans way of saying: "I'm done."

     These plants are full of pods that are full of beans. They're drying, but they don't come out yet. Beans are cut with a special implement and then put into windrows.

     Like so, but I'm going to leave that post until Monday. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Filler!

     Today will just be filler. The author is far away from Owyhee County, where these pictures of a butterfly and sunset were taken.
     The butterfly just sat on a little cooler all day, and barely wiggled his antennae when I crept in close with my camera.



     What might appear to be mist creeping out in the dark parts of this picture is actually some of the finer dust that was kicked up during the day. If you click on this picture you can get a simply monstrous version. Fell free to use it as your desktop or some such.

Green Chopping

     Today and tomorrow will be very short posts as I'm not actually around to write them and I've thrown them together at an earlier date.

     I've shown you before that raising hay is a constant cycle of cutting and growing, but up till now, all I've shown you is baling. Some hay, though, is green chopped. After it's put into windrows, instead of being baled, it's picked up by this machine, chopped into little bits and tossed into a truck.

     The truck will take the chopped hay or greenchop to a pit, but I'll tell you more about those later. For now, just gaze upon the machine...
    Okay that's enough!

The Garden Plot

     It's going to be another busy week for the author, so it's time for some short (but hopefully sweet) posts.
 

      Here is a garden plot. Many farms have one, and so do many of my readers. The best food you're going to get is the food you grow yourself. (Provided that you take care of said food.) Above you can see some sweet corn (next to field corn) and some squash.

     It seems like everyone has grow some pumpkins in their garden. They always try to take over. These plants become enormous, and considering the size of a pumpkin, it's not surprising.

     These gardens put one in mind of days gone by, when farmers grew all of their own food. Some, like these choricero (pronounced: cho-de-sher-oh) peppers, can be stored by pickling or some such. Others, like the corn is best strait off the cob, though it can be cut off an frozen.
     Even if you can't have a garden yourself, you can get great fresh foods by buying locally. There may not be much of a market in your area, but the more demand there is, the more local places will pop up. I urge you to make an effort to buy your fruits and vegetables locally. You won't be sorry.

Another Miscellany Monday

     It's a somewhat quiet morning here in Owyhee County. A great deal of the farmers are in their shops, working on their combines in order to continue the wheat harvest. That leaves very little for me to photograph.

     The cool hours of the morning are a valuable time. During the heat of the day, most folks would rather be in a nice cool place. So the irrigating gets done early. If you're lucky, you can spend the hottest hours of the day in the air-conditioned cab of a tractor of combine.

     So, while the early bird gets the worm, (or much more likely a mouse, in this case) the early farmer gets his outside chores done early, so he doesn't get cooked in the heat.

     Business continues as usual. Haying is perpetual, as the above picture shows, and soon it won't just be the wheat that needs harvesting.
     I encourage any readers to ask any questions they may have, either in the comments section here or on the site's facebook page. I never know what details I missing if you don't.
     I hope to see you all back here tomorrow!

Corn Pollination

     The hybrid seed corn is in full bloom. But corn doesn't have flowers, (I believe I've mentioned this before) it has tassels and silk. First the tassels...

     These are tassels, the male inflorescence of corn. Tassels are covered in anthers which are covered in pollen. To make a seed, the pollen has to get to the silk, the hair-like stuff on the ears of the corn.

     This is silk on an ear. It catches pollen and to help in doing so it has little hairs on each strand.

     Can you see them? (Click the picture to get a bigger version) They collect the genetic material stored in the pollen and mix it with their own. Since the pollen comes from a different variety of corn, you get a hybrid seed.

     Hybrid seeds can exhibit traits that are hard to get otherwise. What exact traits the seed company is going for can vary from field to field but may include: increased yield, greater resistance to disease, or even a certain size or shape.
     It's a very complex system involving a lot of biology and such. Well beyond the scope of this site, at any rate. All you need to know, is that corn is delicious, and it just happens to be in season. (in the northern hemisphere, anyhow) Go out and by some (local, if possible) corn this weekend!

Straw

     Once all the seeds have been removed from the wheat, there's still a lot of material left.

     It's straw! This I'm sure you knew, but what is to become of all this material? Well, some farmers like to bale up their straw.

     Straw is useful as bedding for stock, and as erosion control. You can also make baskets and hats out of it! It's pretty poor feed, but stock will munch a bit of it while they're laying on it. Sometimes it's nice to have something to chew. (It's like diet food.)

     Other farmers will work the straw back into the ground to recoup what few nutrients are left. Some others will burn it and put the ash back into the ground, though this method is becoming less common all the time. Nothing goes to waste, not even time.
     Now it's back to the trucks for me. See you back here tomorrow.