Harvest!

I'm not gonna lie, this was pretty brutal but we got the job done, along with 40 Monty's plots in 2 days. On day 1, we took 3 samples per plot, each sample consisted of 2 adjacent rows, 18" each, so 3 row foot per sample. We then bound these sheaves up and dried them on Carl's shop floor. In all we harvested 240 (3 x 80 sheaves) - this makes one appreciate what folks did in the fields before all of this automation... every day! On the second day (yesterday Friday may 29th), we went to work by first measuring the total biomass of grain and stover then by threshing the grain from the stover. We took a sub-sample of stover for plant tissue testing but also for drying so that we can estimate the dry biomass of both grain and stover. I am now weighing the grain and will begin to dry both grain and stover in this coming week. We have been fortunate that Ryan Heiniger of Syngenta will use his research wheat harvester to give us (hopefully) corroborating results on the harvest. The harvester has a 7 ft header and Ryan will make two passes in the center of each of our plots (now with the borders mowed for visibility and to eliminate edge effects. As soon as I get some credible numbers, I'll post.

Special thanks:

Stu Tribbs, Christian Kloot, Dara park, Mark Evans (grunt work and data gathering)

Justin Ballew from Clemson Extension for arranging the thresher and for transporting some of the sheaves back to the shop

Warren Kearns - Monty's Plant food, for sustenance (Whoppers at lunch) and logisitcal support - transporting shaves back to Carl's

Forgive me if i have missed anyone...

Images of the action below:

 

Mowing between plots for visibility and eliminating edge effects

 

Christian and Stu with sheaves ready to go

 

Sheaves drying at Carl's shop

 

Dara weighing sheaves and sampling stover

 

Mark at the thresher - the first 30 samples are fun, afterward it gets pretty old....

 

After 240 samples, this is the amount of stover from the threshing...

 

The Syngenta research harvester with 7' header - I got to get me one of those.