Harvest Day on Rich Ranch

This has been the first time that we have planted “mielies” (maize) on the farm and yesterday was harvest day.

It is amazing how technical and scientific farming has become. A few months ago I told about how the soil was tested by the hectare and lime, fertilizers and all sorts of chemicals had to be added to each hectare as it was needed. Then came the planting and again someone had to come in and the type of seed had to correlated to the type of fertilizers used. The maize came up beautifully and then the floods came. Not long after the floods we had a few weeks of intense heat that did major damage Even though the crop yield was not as much as we would have like, yesterday was a real interesting day on Rich Ranch again.

We had to hire someone to harvest for us as we are really small farmers and this is one expensive piece of equipment, so our neighbour, Christoffel,  arrived with this enormous harvester which is a really amazing piece of machinery.

Combined Harvester

The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. It combines into a single operation process that previously required three separate operations (reaping, threshing, and winnowing). Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), soybeans and flax (linseed). The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock. The cut crop is stored one side and in our case the grain is sent off to the grain silos in town until we have need for it.

Tapping Grain from Harvester

I had a ride in this amazing machine and it felt like an aeroplane ready for takeoff, taxiing down the runway. It gobbles up everything in its path and miraculously does its job separating everything and spitting out what it doesn’t want. It has a computer on board that will let you know how many hectares you have harvested, what your yield per hectare is, how long you are busy, I am sure it could even tell you a few private things about yourself.

Well our fields are harvested now and the cattle will enjoy what is left on the fields - the whole cycle is complete. Another year had gone by on the fields and once again you can only stand in awe of nature. Something to ponder is that when you sit down to a plate of food you have no comprehension of what it takes to get that meal on your table. Just food for thought.