At the Farm...Harvesting

<Zeke>
Everyone on the farm helps to do the farm work, like harvesting, after school and on the weekends. 


How do you grow the grains?

• plough the soil and fertilize with nitrogen
• plant the seeds in rows in a trench
• the seeder machine covers the seeds with soil
• wait for rain
• the little shoots germinate and sense gravity to make them grow up
• after it has grown a bit, spray the weeds
• after it has grown it is harvested using the header (takes about 6 months to grow)

How much sorghum do you get per year?
1100 tonne or about 40 big truck loads


We helped with harvesting of sorghum.

This is the header cutting the heads off the sorghum.  It then bashes the seed bits off and spits the stem bits out the back.  We all had a ride in this.

The grain is then loaded into the chaser bin.  It was driven by Greenie's dad or by Sam, Jack or Tom.


The bin is called a chaser bin because it chases the header down the paddock  and gets filled on the run.  Even Sam can drive the chaser bin while it is being filled from the header.


Some of the sorghum was loaded into a truck and unloaded into the silos at home.  It will be used for cow feed.

 

 

The rest of the sorghum was loaded into silos to be sold.

This is 7 year old Tom driving the tractor and chaser bin the help with harvest.


Sam then reversed the tractor and bin up beside the silo


And Tom gave directions from the top of the silo


The grain is unloaded.  Tom and his cousin Tom are watching to check when the silo is full.

We did the next load from the other side of the silo.  I was on top of the silo with Tom.

 

 

It was getting dark.  Sometimes harvesting goes all through the night because the grain needs to be harvested when it's ready and needs to be finished before it rains.

The Greens also had crops of mungbeans.  They were getting harvested at the same time as the sorghum.

 

 

 

 

At the Farm...The Crops

<Zeke>

What crops do the farmer Greens grow?
There are 2 types of crops - Summer and Winter.  We have grown sorghum and mungbeans over this summer, but change crops each year.

A description of the different crops:

Sorghum (Summer) - little red ball seeds.  Used for stock feed mostly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunflowers (Summer) - grey stripe seeds are used for bird seed, black seeds are used for people food & sunflower oil.  The black seeds have too much oil for birds and too much will make their feathers fall out.



 


Corn (Summer) - most corn grown near the green farm is for animal feed, cornflakes and corn chips
Sweet corn is a different variety and popcorn is another type with a round ball shape grain.

This is some corn flake corn with the plant nearly dead and ready for harvest.

 

Mungbeans (Summer) - These are used for making bean sprouts and pastes.



Soybeans (Summer) - Used for soy sauce (fermented, like wine) and soymilk if it is crushed and squeezed




Millet (Summer) - used for bird seed
 


Canary (Winter) - like its name, used for bird seed.




Wheat (Winter) - Main Winter crop right across Australia.  Used for flour, weetbix, stockfeed




Barley (Winter) - used for beer, milo, malt, cereals

 

Black Barley (Winter) - the seed is not harvested.  This crop is just grown for the cows to graze in.


Oats (Winter) - used for porridge after it is shelled and rolled.  Also grown for the cows to graze in.




Chickpeas (Winter) - used for chickpea flour or for tins.




Linseed (Winter) - used for oil.  It is the oil used to oil cricket bats & furniture, some breads have the grain in it




Canola (Winter) - little black seeds like poppy seeds.  The seeds are slippery and smell like broccoli (this is a cousin plant of canola).  Canola is used for margarine, cooking oil, stock feed and dog food.






The soils is very thick and black here which is good for growing crops

 

Do you have hay?  How is it grown?
Hay is made from the left overs of the grain plant after harvesting or from a specific hay crop and cut before the seeds grow on the top.

Here is a picture of a paddock with the hay all baled up.  Guess how many bales their are?

 

 

At the Farm...The Toys

<Zeke>
At the farm they have pretty normal playground toys like bikes and slides

But they also have very cool toys - quad bikes, go karts and motorbikes!

Here is Rémi on the go-kart

and me with Sam

 

Kian had a turn with Sam too

We rode little motorbikes - this is Kian

 

 

And Rémi rode it too



 

 

And I rode it by myself too.  It was really fun and I rode on the grass as well as the gravel.

This is Sam, Jack and Tom's cousin Tom taking me for a ride on the quad bike