New Buhler Grain Cleaner

Our home built for $3500 rotary grain screen just could not get us into specification (99% above the screen,.i.e retention) so we either wasted lots of $ on freight and grading losses to send the grain 200 plus km or we bought a grain cleaner, fortunately for us one of if not the biggest companies in the world of grain cleaning, flour mill machinery plus plus (google them they do just about every food processing gear including chocolate), Buhler just happened to have one of their TAS 152A-2 cleaners in the country, sitting 50km away in Nairobi, it is made in Germany and the quality is beautiful.
We have set it up temporally for now but when we finish building our grain store/shed we will move it to be able to clean direct from the 25t delivery pit and into the store/shed, it will clean wheat at 50 to 60t per hour so it will allow us to clean all our grain straight of the harvester.
As we deliver direct to end users we need to provide a clean product ready to mill or malt.
 

Barley Harvest Photos

We have been harvesting barley for about 10 days, slow going with the crop on the ground, currently yielding 3.7 t ha.
We are also harvesting the Mung Beans (Green Grams), we will put them through the cleaner tomorrow and bag into 50kg bags for the local market, will know the yield once we clean them as we did not weigh into the shed.

Obama called, I said we were too busy with harvest for him to visit

Photos from our major 2015 field day

Click on any photo to expand, team Ausquest did a great job on the day, thanks also to Annie, Grace and her crazy friend Tara + the two small boys of course. Just on 80 people attended.

Chickpeas in the trials

These are Kabuli Chickpeas, I have been very impressed with their lack of disease, they are podding up well, probably a bit on the low side for mechanical harvesting although not terrible.
 

Yellow beans in trials looking good

The Top Photo is of Yellow beans on the left and Faba beans on the right, the Yellow bean plants are only about 40cm high but loaded with pods (bottom photo) we would have to hand windrow them and then machine harvest with the Combine if we grow them commercially as the pods are very low.
Wait and see how they yield.

Veiw from the farm office

The most advanced barley (in the photo) is at my best guess around 5 weeks from harvest, the Mung beans are podding up well, we have had 214mm of rain in crop in the crop above  and about 165mm in the Mung beans and dry planted barley which is still at the grain fill stage.   

No Chemical Resistance with Group P (people)

We have about 120/ 130 casuals hand weeding 160 ha of Mung Beans, we planted them dry and although we had a grass control option in the form of a herbicide we did not have any broadleaf weed control options.
They are doing a good job, it is all paid by the row, thank goodness for straight rows.
(Click on photo for a better view) 

Spraying Barley (Dry planted 57 days since emergence)

Yesterday I was applying 10kg ha of Potassium Sulphate together with 250mls of Tilt, barley was planted dry with a full profile (1meter of wet soil) but about 15 cm of dry soil on top, this crop has had 155mm of rain since emergence. It is looking very strong although time will tell.
I would estimate there was approximately 180/200mm of PAW (plant available water) in the soil at the time of emergence, add to this the 155mm of "in crop" rainfall of 155mm =335mm less 110mm to allow for evaporation (French/Schultz method) and we have 225mm available for grain fill.
The general range of WUE of wheat and Barley (water use efficiency) is 10kg per mm of grain to 20kg per mm of grain.(can be a bit higher or lower)
So with 225mm available for grain fill at 10kg per mm = 2.25 t ha (2250kg per ha) poor WUE
or at 20kg per mm it would yield 4.5 t ha (4500kg per ha) which would be a good WUE.
Only time will tell. 

Planting Mung Beans

We are just planting our latest 160 ha of Mung Beans (Green Grams), we have another 160 ha we planted dry about 50 days ago, they are up and look OK, we split the planting so we could spread out harvest as well as a bit of risk management, the earlier planted should do better (maybe) although the latest Mungs are being planted into a meter of moisture, (about 180mm of plant available water at my estimate)
Wait and see, we have put 10kg ha of potassium sulphate on as a foliar spray twice to try and get the flowering and pod set more even, the varieties we have tend to flower over a longer period than I would like, this obviously results in some pods being fully ripe/dry with others still very green, this is from my limited knowledge on Mung beans a bit of their nature although we are doing what we can to tighten this period up. 

Trials, looking tidy !

We have our two major field days coming up in early June, one for commercial farmers and support people and the other for small farmers who live locally, our trial site is looking good, we are missing Tim our Canadian, things happened a lot smother while he ran the trials.

A freind from Nairobi in the Barley,the crop is pushing into head

Click on photo for larger view

John and Wiz playing in the Barley

Barley at around day 63 from emergence, coming into head

Seed treating Mung Bean Seed

We treated some Mung Beans (Green Grams) on Saturday, we have 160 ha already planted and will plant a further 160 ha this week.

Mung Bean Progress (Green Grams) Day 33

Tall Friends over the fence

Yellow Beans in our small trials (local Village variety) plus Faba Beans (bottom photo)

Click on Photos for larger View

Barley Enjoying the recent rain (70mm for the week)

Barley looking good

Over the weekend we received 55mm of rain, I took this photo on Thursday last week (pre rain), the crop was already pretty happy although 55mm is very welcome.

Some Visitors to our farm

On Friday we had a very interesting visit from a group, we showed them our trails and crops and had a good chat for a few hours.

2015 Trials

These are some of our small trials we just planted on the 4th of April, we have Faba beans, Mung beans, Snake beans, Yellow beans (local), Lab Lab, Soya Beans * 5 varieties, and two varieties of Barley plus Chick Peas. If you click on the photos you will get a better view, this years trials are planted in the middle of our early planted barley.

100mm to daylight

This was a barley plant I found that ended up way to deep, most was planted at 60mm or so to get into moisture, this fellow made it only just.

Harvesting/Planting Barley Early March

We were harvesting barley in one field at the same time as we were planting it in another, we moisture seek planted about 425 ha and it has come up well, would like a bit of rain anytime soon, it may happen next week. We also dry planted another field of barley as well as some Mung Beans (green grams)

Barley about two weeks off harvest, Photo taken 8th Feb

The barley has moved along towards harvest from the previous photo on the 25th of Jan, grain size looks good, yield???? lets wait for the Lie detector (combine harvester) to reveal that.

Another Wedding Photo

Commercial Trails

I took this photo Saturday afternoon (31st Jan) while chasing a few Zebras out of the field, the foreground is fallow that will be planted in March to Barley, the background are commercial size trails/seed increase blocks (peas and Mung beans).
From Left there is 320 ha of Barley, then 9.6 ha of KS20 Green Grams (Mung Beans) then the more ripe strip is Field peas (4.6 ha), then N26 Mung Beans (9.4 ha), then a hybrid Sunflower (4.4 ha) then on the far right is a hybrid Maize (4.2ha). If you click on the photo you will get a better look. 
 

Our Little Girl Gets Married

 

Our Shed/Workshop

We built our machinery shed/workshop/office out of local cut stones/cement and steel, it is the first building that I have ever built, obviously I did not do the doing and don't look to close as it is not perfect, it does do the job though.  I may have gotten a bit exited about safety yellow I think.

Barley Progress

Photos taken on the 25th Jan 2015,the Barley is just starting to mature,if you click on the photos they will give you a larger one, the trails/seed increase block are in the background.