Feldspar
Member
- Location
- Essex, Cambs and Suffolk
Last year we managed to get harvest finished in reasonable time, but then the weather was kind and we had a fair % of the farm in spring crops which were pretty thin.
This year we have a much larger % in winter crops, the spring crops are not as ropey as last year, the area we have to cut is up 5% and the weather at harvest may be worse. That said, the combine did break down quite a bit last year, and I'm hoping we won't lose quite as much time this year.
Normally we only start cutting when cereals get below 15%, beans about the same and OSR below 9%. In years gone by this normally has meant that we are often the last to finish harvest in our area, and I think we do lose some quality as well as creating knock-on effects onto the establishment / preparation for the next crop.
With that in mind, I would like to get through harvest more quickly this year, and I think that means cutting at higher moistures.
So my question is, given that aim, how should you think about moisture levels and when to start cutting? Do you just raise the threshold up and say that I am going to start cutting at 17% for cereals and beans, and 11% say for OSR and then start at that moisture right from the beginning?
At that stage, obviously, you don't know how much the combine is going to break down, or what the weather is going to be like at all. My grandfather used to have a number of sayings, but one of his more sensible ones was, "Better to cut at 17% in the beginning of August than at 20% at the end of September."
The obvious downsides of having a very simplistic rule is that you are insensitive to changing conditions. There is clearly no point in hammering through OSR at 13% if you have a run of fine weather ahead and your wheat isn't ready yet. Against that, however, it's very easy to take it easy to start with, then have a run off unexpectedly bad weather, and then you're even more quickly into a fire-fighting situation.
One other way of thinking about it might be this: we normally have about, say, 25% of our acreage left to cut after the time I think is the ideal time to have finished. To cut that 25% within that ideal time we need to be cutting for an extra x number of hours over and above what we otherwise would have done. Therefore, as you go through the harvesting season, you have an aim to cut for x hours more at some point or other. It doesn't mean you end up actually achieving this exactly, but this might be a better way of thinking about it than a simple rule of 'start cutting at 17%'.
It seems the mentality with harvesting is that people run their operation so that they have a backlog of fields to cut -- that is, the optimum time to harvest those fields has already passed. With spraying on the other hand, we aim to get each job done at the optimum time, and think we're failing if we have a backlog of things to do. The question is whether the two different approaches are justified? I wonder whether we should instead be cutting quickly enough and for long enough that it isn't unusual to be sitting around waiting for a few more fields to become optimally fit.
A rambling post, I know, and I'm sure the answer to all of this is that experience and a feeling for the situation is what primarily dictates the strategy through harvest. Nevertheless, I'd be interesting to see how others think about this topic. Thanks in advance!
This year we have a much larger % in winter crops, the spring crops are not as ropey as last year, the area we have to cut is up 5% and the weather at harvest may be worse. That said, the combine did break down quite a bit last year, and I'm hoping we won't lose quite as much time this year.
Normally we only start cutting when cereals get below 15%, beans about the same and OSR below 9%. In years gone by this normally has meant that we are often the last to finish harvest in our area, and I think we do lose some quality as well as creating knock-on effects onto the establishment / preparation for the next crop.
With that in mind, I would like to get through harvest more quickly this year, and I think that means cutting at higher moistures.
So my question is, given that aim, how should you think about moisture levels and when to start cutting? Do you just raise the threshold up and say that I am going to start cutting at 17% for cereals and beans, and 11% say for OSR and then start at that moisture right from the beginning?
At that stage, obviously, you don't know how much the combine is going to break down, or what the weather is going to be like at all. My grandfather used to have a number of sayings, but one of his more sensible ones was, "Better to cut at 17% in the beginning of August than at 20% at the end of September."
The obvious downsides of having a very simplistic rule is that you are insensitive to changing conditions. There is clearly no point in hammering through OSR at 13% if you have a run of fine weather ahead and your wheat isn't ready yet. Against that, however, it's very easy to take it easy to start with, then have a run off unexpectedly bad weather, and then you're even more quickly into a fire-fighting situation.
One other way of thinking about it might be this: we normally have about, say, 25% of our acreage left to cut after the time I think is the ideal time to have finished. To cut that 25% within that ideal time we need to be cutting for an extra x number of hours over and above what we otherwise would have done. Therefore, as you go through the harvesting season, you have an aim to cut for x hours more at some point or other. It doesn't mean you end up actually achieving this exactly, but this might be a better way of thinking about it than a simple rule of 'start cutting at 17%'.
It seems the mentality with harvesting is that people run their operation so that they have a backlog of fields to cut -- that is, the optimum time to harvest those fields has already passed. With spraying on the other hand, we aim to get each job done at the optimum time, and think we're failing if we have a backlog of things to do. The question is whether the two different approaches are justified? I wonder whether we should instead be cutting quickly enough and for long enough that it isn't unusual to be sitting around waiting for a few more fields to become optimally fit.
A rambling post, I know, and I'm sure the answer to all of this is that experience and a feeling for the situation is what primarily dictates the strategy through harvest. Nevertheless, I'd be interesting to see how others think about this topic. Thanks in advance!