Monday, April 19, 2010

Garbanzo Seeding at the Tammany Farm

Joe and I went down this afternoon (Sunday) to get "my tractor" from the Tammany farm.  I like playing out doors and want to work more on the yard.  So when Joe asked if I wanted to go with him to go get the little blue tractor, I said yes! (to read more on that, see the At Home on the Farm page).  Once on our Tammany farm, we passed one of our fields that was being seeded to garbanzo beans and I thought I would share the process, sort of a Garbanzo Seeding 101 lesson.  I still find it interesting as well as amazing at how we constantly must change to work better, faster, more efficiently not only to keep our farm financially healthy, but to leverage the farmers time in the field in a better manner.  In esssence we have to do more with less, just like the rest of the businesses (Ag or non Ag) related.

Garbanzo Seeding 101
Step 1: The garb seeds arrive at the farm via one of our semi's and if you look at this picture, you will see that they are dumped from the bottom of the semi onto a conveyor called a belt-a-vator (sp?) 
The belt-a-vator then transports the seeds up into a smaller seed truck (called a nurse truck) that will go out into the field where the tractor and seeding drill are.
This is what the garb seeds look like.  They are pretreated to help protect the seed against soil borne diseases.  (They look sort of like Trix cereal and are very colorful). 

Step 2:  Next comes the cute farmer to drive the tractor.
Step 3:  The cute farmer then drives the tractor and seeding drill around and around the fields to plant the seeds.
Step 4:  This part is up to "Mother Nature" to help us farmers out with warm weather and adequate moisture.

Step 5:  Assuming "Step 4" is sucessrfully followed by Mother Nature, the farmer will carefully tend the crops and protect them against weeds and insects.   Watch for Step 5 (harvesting) in a September blog!  Maybe I'll even have a new camera (hint to the farmer hubby - there is a model at Costco that I like) that can take small movie clips.  So there, now you have learned how garbanzos are planted, go celebrate and buy some "Hummus" at your local store! =)