Friday

Step 2. Rake

Part 2 of our making oaten hay series.
 
Aerial photography courtesy of Vince Bucello, taken from his drone.

Raking oats.

 
We rake the windrows of oaten hay about 8 days after mowing, combining two rows into one. This large field of oats is a dryland crop i.e. grown on rainfall only. Raking can only be done once the dew comes back into the row at night, generally starting about 3am and finishing by 9am before it gets too hot, and the hay too dry.
This applies to the raking of both oats and lucerne (alfalfa). Hence why I have quite a few sunrise photos of raking eg: oats: Farm-ily Oct 29 & lucerne: Farm-ily Oct 5.

 
A beautiful time of day to be working.
 
 
Our rake is a locally built roller bar rake made by Berrima Engineering that enables us to rake oats two rows into one, and lucerne three rows into one, with a raking width of up to 12 metres.

5 comments:

  1. My husband and I are both enjoying the drone photos and the explanation of farming practices. Thanks!

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    1. Glad you are enjoying them Kim. The way we go about things wouldn't be that dissimilar to you I would imagine, albeit half a world away!

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  2. It's very interesting to see how you do things over there! The aerial photos you've posted are really neat! Congrats on being part of a farming video! Yeah, if that is an adult Magpie feeding junior, I'd say junior is about ready to be on it's own!

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    1. Thanks Ryan. Lovely to hear from you. The day of filming was certainly a different day to our normal day, but a great experience nonetheless.

      And yes, I do agree about the baby Magpie. Looked big enough to be getting it's own feed I thought, but the noise it was making ... I think the mum just kept feeding it to try and quieten it down!

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