|
NW IA | "Iowa Ingredient" is a foodie type show on Iowa Public TV. I've never watched an episode, appears to be plant heavy topics, I was drawn in by the promo showing a farmer straight cutting oats.
Our oats turned into a bit of a fiasco. I've been raising my oats with no chemicals for about ten years and have had no weed challenges whatsoever. I don't know why the wheels came off this year, but we had lambsquarters scattered through the field this year and they got very thick where I was a few inches wide of the mark with the drill.
We have been letting the oats get dead ripe and following the swather with the combine. Due to the weeds this year we swathed the oats with a 4 day clear forecast to make harvest a bit easier. You guessed it, we got smacked with a pop-up downpour followed by dews that hung on almost all day.
It was necessary to tip the windrows, not too bad a job with my rotary rake, but damage was done and we ended up with 15% oats that I put in wagons with pre-hung screw-in fans. Surprisingly the fans worked perfectly and the oats are in good shape. They yielded a bit over 60 BPA (we've been fairly consistent at about 120 in recent good years.). Test weight was better than expected, but I can't remember the exact number, 33 - 35 pounds??
I had thick oats re-growth that even gave the under-seeded red clover stiff competition.
 (IMG_20250725_193857596 (full).jpg)
Attachments
----------------
 IMG_20250725_193857596 (full).jpg (154KB - 2 downloads)
| |
|
Aaron Lehman on Iowa Ingredient right now. Oats is the topic. nt
