Feeding America, Days 26-28 of Harvest 2011

Greetings from the garbanzo fields in Idaho!  Many farmers like us are in the midst of harvesting their garbanzo bean crop and thankfully we have been having unseasonably warm sunny days - which are perfect harvest conditions.  The garb plants are dried and crispy, but the plant stock will get "ropey" due to ground dew in the mornings and evenings and when that happens, it makes it hard to harvest.  So generally we don't get out into the field until late morning or early afternoon to begin cutting the plants and the crunchier and crisper the plant is, the better it goes through the combine. 

In the early morning hours, farmers will usually start getting the fields prepped for the fall wheat crop to be seeded.  The video clip below, Farmer Joe explains that he is spraying out weeds that have started growing in the harvested wheat stubble.

Farmer Jay finished the garbanzo bean harvest down at the Tammany farm and moved his combine up to the Genesee farm.  The header on the combines need to be removed for highway travel.

Farmer Jay's pick-up pulling the header 

The picture below is what a combine looks like without it's header. 

Farmer Jay climbing up into the combine to re-attach the header

 

With two big combines in the field, we can go through about 100 acres of garbanzo's per day per combine.  

A loaded semi truck full of garbanzo beans

Well that's all for today, Farmer Joe says our hired man, Cody has some good shots of today's harvest (Thursday) so come on back to see what I'm posting tomorrow!  All my  best, Gayle  Don't forget you can contact me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com or leave me a comment. =)