Baling up the straw

A few weeks ago I did some posts showing the combine harvester, harvesting the wheat, well here are some photos of the straw being put into lines in the field ready to be baled up. You can also see the big round bales in the field waiting to be collected to go into the straw barn until they are needed. Sheep and cattle will sleep on the straw during the winter and probably eat a bit of it too!

Wheat - harvest

These three photos show the combine in action - the header is moving through the crop, inside the machine the wheat and the straw are separated - can you see the straw coming out of the back? When the combine is full of wheat, the wheat is put into a trailer and the tractor takes the trailer to the grain store. We store our wheat on the farm for our chickens to eat - zero food miles!

Wheat - moving the combine

When we move the combine to a new field it will not go through the gates on the farm, as it is too wide with the header on the front. You can see in the first photo that we take the header off the front of the combine and put it onto a trailer that is pulled by a tractor. The header is the part of the combine that cuts down the wheat and draws the plant into the combine so that we can separate the wheat from the straw. When we get into the new field the tractor and trailer and the combine are manouvered so that the combine driver can put the header back onto the combine. It is a very big machine and the driver has to be very accurate as he (or she) approaches the trailer. See second photo!

Harvesting the wheat

This picture shows the damage that the heavy rain has made on the crop, flattening it in places. On our farm the fields are the relatively small, compared to the large fields in East Anglia - see the old hedges around the edge - this makes combining a little more tricky for us. The combine starts by going around the field and you can see the straw that has been left behind. This will be baled up later with a baling machine. It has been sold to other farmers who will use it on their farms for their sheep and cattle.