The Lowery Family Massey Ferguson 510, bought new in 1976.
Since not all the pods on a lentil plant mature at the same time, it's a balancing act to know when to swath and when to wait. If you cut too early, you may not get as many lentils. If you wait too long, the early pods may be bone dry and shell out onto the ground. Also, generally speaking, the early pods will hold 2 lentils per pod while the later pods may only have one lentil per pod. So, you want the early pods to be ready, but not overly dry.
A week ago I swathed the lentils and it was only a matter of waiting for the swath to dry. Lentils are poor competitors with other plants, so my swath also included quite a bit of volunteer emmer, wild mustard, some alfalfa, peas, grass, and lambsquarter. The whole swath pile needs to dry down before picking it up with the combine. We had a couple of nice hot days last week - in the mid-90s - but were faced with unruly weather for the weekend - cold temperatures and rain. My father-in-law Clyde had a break in his harvest schedule, so he came over on Friday to help me get the combine ready. It took us most of the morning and part of the afternoon, but we managed to loosen rusted parts (the combine probably hadn't been used in 15 years or so), fix a fuel line, and adjust the sieves and concaves. By early evening, I was in the field picking up the swath and watching the lentils fall into the hopper. It was pretty satisfying and I feel we've come a long way since last year on our grains and seeds.
Picking up the swath.
I've said this before, but one of our challenges as small-scale farmers growing grains is the equipment needed to handle them. We're piecing it together and will only get better and better at it. Our next challenge is to successfully market our specialty crops directly to customers. We're too small for most seed handling facilities to bother with (i.e. seed cleaners) and given our scale, it makes no sense to sell to the local commodity elevator where farmers get pennies per pound for their crop. Besides, were not growing undifferentiated commodities, we're growing high-quality, nutritious food.
Dumping the crop into the truck.
I harvested the first variety, Red Chief, and dumped it into the truck. After harvesting our second variety, Petite Crimson, the chain on the unloading auger broke, so the lentils had to sit in the combine hopper until the next day when I could fix it (and only a few hours before it started raining). The truck with our lentils is now safely backed into the quonset waiting to be cleaned, likely the subject of a blog post since it's bound to be an adventure, as I discover just how effective our little seed cleaner will be in removing all but the lentils (is it folly for us to try to accomplish the entire grain chain - plant, grow, harvest, clean, package, and sell?).
The harvested field.
Peas, alfalfa, mustard, emmer, and yes, lentils.
On another note, if you notice in the photo, our lentils are rather bland looking, unlike the bright and beautiful lentils you find in the grocery store. The reason for this is because ours contain every part of the seed. Many lentil varieties are decorticated, where the outer skin is taken off. This reveals their bright color and helps them cook faster. Unless a part of the seed is toxic (as is the case in quinoa seeds which are coated with the chemical compound saponin that has to be washed off before eating), removing something also removes important nutrients. There is good reason why whole-wheat flour is nutritionally superior to white or all-purpose flour (which also explains why white flour has been "enriched"). Our goal is to grow good food, not grow good food only to strip away half its nutrients.
Next up: bronze barley, black barley, Sonora wheat, and Khorasan wheat.
