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  • From: robert schuler <sunnfarm AT bellatlantic.net>
  • To: bockpa AT plesh.com, Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Paul and grain.
  • Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 14:56:23 -0400

I rented two farms a while back and the owners were retired farmers one guy
had
a pull type IH combine with 42" grain head and the other guy had an AC 60"
head
pull type combine. Both were popular back in the good old days when farms were
small profitable and diversified. I looked at these machines for years hoping
to
buy and rebuild them, in the end I could have got them for free but just did
not
have the skill to rebuild them. They wound up like all old harvesters in the
junkyard.
In my local newspaper every week there are hundreds of combines for sale many
self propelled models can be had for $1000-$5000... You need to be a skilled
mechanic to keep one going and spare parts can cost more than what you paid
for
the machine. But they do work, at least good enough if you have a few acres.

I grow soft red winter wheat in my vegetable rotation as well as covercrop rye
for seed and sometimes barley. I get a neighbor with a new $200000 combine to
do
the harvesting another friend loans me a tractor trailer to haul it.
To grow grain even a garden patch field, you will need a harvester, a way to
move the grain from the field and a place to store it. Then you will need a
grain cleaner and you may want to bale the straw.
Around here hobby farms and horse farms buy allot of small grains and straw
its
a good sideline business for a part time farmer or retired guy.
Selling rye covercrop seed is good too but too often home grown seed get weedy
and you will get allot of complaints.
My Amish cousins harvest with a grain binder, they tie up the bundled shocks
and
let them dry in the sun then thresh with a belt pulley driven thresher...Bob.
Sunny Meadow Farm
Bridgeton, NJ.


"Paul A. Bock" wrote:

> Good Morning,
>
> Is there anybody out that that harvests their own small grains?
>
> Maybe as seed for cover crops?
>
> What equipment do you use?
>
> Does anyone have any information on the threshing mechanism?
>
> I have heard that there are old PTO driven harvesters out there, but I have
> yet to see one. I am pretty handy at fabricating things and I want to build
> a small one on an old truck frame. I understand how the feed cylinder works
> to pull the top of the grain in and I understand the reaper mechanism,
> basically a sickle bar. I understand how the grain cleaner work, basically
> a sifting operation along several screens. But I am not sure how the
> thresher works. I understand that it beats the grain heads to separate the
> grains from the straw. I would like to see one of these mechanisms in
> operation.
>
> I scattered some winter rye in an area to stop erosion and I never tilled it
> in and now it has the most wonderful iridescent grain heads. I'm going to
> let it go all the way. Cut it down when it starts to dry out and hang
> bunches up in the barn to dry out. I have been studying the development of
> the heads as they grow.
>
> Anybody have a good reference book on growing and harvesting small grains?
> (wheat, oats, rye, clover, etc?)
>
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