Seed grading, 2014. We must be getting close to sowing!!
Every year my neighbour Neil Macgregor and I check with each other. The conversations go like this…
‘Have you seen Ginge?’
‘No – not for a while’.
‘I saw him last week at the post office – he said he should be here in a few weeks.’
‘Every time I ever ask he says ‘a few weeks..’.’
Chuckle….
So who is Ginge? Well his full name is ‘Ginger’ of course. 😉 He is our seed grader. He has a heart of gold. A seed grader’s life must feel a little bit like a travelling show. I have known Ginger most of my life. He know all the local news, fixes anything thats broken within walking distance of the grader – a very handy man. And a larrikin. Seed grading is fairly slow – so there is plenty of time to talk. And I enjoy catching up.
Ginger complains that everybody wants him to go to their place when they are ready – but when he is driving by and rings up – the reply ‘Ah.. I’m not ready yet – can you come back later?’ However, he tends to have a fairly standard run in our neighbourhood. I know that he normally starts with one of my more distant neighbours and works his way through each farm until he is done. Once I hear he has landed in our district I can normally predict the day he gets to “Loloma” fairly accurately. Apparently though, this isn’t a normal year – he beat me by a whole day. So one morning, with the boomspray 75% filled with chemical the Phone rings..’I’ll be their in an hour or so…’
So a mild panic ensued – bins had to be moved into the final positions, trucks arranged. Unfortunately, Dan had an appointment in town, I had to get the chemical out – so God Bless Dad… He stays around and gets Ginger going.
So what does a seed grader do? Well he has a machine that is part mechanical, part witchcraft. If setup well, it can take a very dirty sample of grain and sort out the grain from stalks, chaff and even foreign seeds. But ask him what settings does he use.. ‘Well… is complicated.’ is about the most specific instruction I ever received.
So here are a few seed grading pictures:
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So this is the setup. Ginger pulls up next to a silo with seed in it and setups up the grader. We need a truck for the clean seed and another truck for the gradings. Notice the old Beddie is there doing her job as usual. |
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Here you see the auger coming in with the uncleaned grain. It immediately falls across a mesh cylinder which allows the grain to fall through the cylinder and the large stalks, rocks, sticks etc to bounce around the cylinder – thus preventing them from entering the machine. From there there are different size sieves to extract the small or cracked grains and an indent roller which help separate different seed types based on weight. |
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This is a sample of one of the grading extracts. A mix of cracked or small grains as well as straw. |
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This is a sample containing mainly chaff extracted early on in the machine. We mix them all of the seconds or gradings together in the bedford for use as feed throughout the year for Dad and Jenny’s poultry. |
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And this is the cleaned seed. Very nice – good size, no straws or black oats. We will then store this and treat it with fungicide just prior to sowing. We tend to get a little more doen than we need in case we have a rating error at sowing time. |
So thats seed grading done for another year. Ginge has moved on to the next farm. I know that not all farmers get their seed graded, but truly – how could you miss out on this.. 🙂
NeilK