[Farm-ily]

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.

Thursday

Step 1. Mow

Got a real treat for you over the next few days ….

Last Friday we were involved in a bit of film making. Vince Bucello from Midstate Video Productions spent the day on farm filming for a documentary on agriculture in Australia.

Vince has kindly allowed me share some stills taken from his drone.

It gives a whole new perspective of farming,
in particular the process of making oaten hay.

Mowing oats.

This paddock is sown in bays for surface irrigation. The mower is mowing one bay only, just for the camera and has almost completed the job. The rest of the paddock is to be harvested for seed. Our oaten hay is normally made on dryland country i.e. non-irrigated, with our irrigation reserved for the production of seed or grain and lucerne (alfalfa) hay.

To the left of the mower parts of the crop have gone down (lain over) due to the weight of the heavy yields. Although the crop has gone down the plants will continue to grow, the seeds ripen.

Farm-ily Oct 23 shows how high this crop is.

The little patchwork squares above where the mower is are the trial plots of oat varieties Farm-ily Oct 13.