For the week of August 19th – 26th
We finished the barley over the weekend – nice to have it all off before we get too much poor weather. We did have a storm go through with 12mm on the weekend, but we were able to get the last field immediately after and there doesn’t appear to be any issues with the quality. Malt barley is the most sensitive crop to moisture at harvest. The desired genetics for malt barley are for a quicker germinating seed which helps through the malt process, which speeds up the amount of time it takes for the maltster to handle the grain. The issue we run into is at harvest if we have successive moisture events, or even prolonged periods of high humidity (especially heavy fog every morning) can cause the seed to start the germination process. This process is referred to as “chitting” – they run the barley sample through a small roller mill device and if it has started the germination process, it knocks the end of the seed off (endosperm). The germination rate may still be acceptable, but it may not be stable – the germination rate could drop off quicker than if it was not chitted.
The other quality parameters on our barley samples appear to be satisfactory as well – plump (how fat the kernel is), low protein, bushel weight, and percent of kernels that germinate. We still have another week of running the barley we harvested through the grain dryer — it all came off between 16-19% moisture and has to be dried.
After we finished the barley we ran the combines back to the main yard. We used our industrial air compressor to blow each combine and cart off – nice to get all the barley straw, beards and seeds blown off when complete. We are next moving into oats – these oats are planned to move into a specialty program as long as we meet the required parameters.
This next week looks to be hot and sunny for a few days then calling for showers by mid week, and following up with heat again on the weekend.
