Barley Harvest 2015

Hey everyone!

Yes, we are still in the midst of harvest around here, although it has been somewhat disjointed. We've had a lot of stop and go with harvest this year, largely because the crops are all ripening at different times. Even within the barley harvest, we had a few days break between cutting barley at Tom and Carol's and cutting the barley that Jeff and I raised. At this point our barley harvest is more or less finished, so I thought I'd give you all a brief wrap-up of that. If you want to go back and read up on how our winter wheat harvest went, you can do that by CLICKING HERE. The winter wheat post was one of my most-clicked posts of the summer, so that tells me that people must be enjoying the farm-related posts and hopefully learning something, too! 

So. Barley. 

When barley is ripe, the heads bow down.

 We raise what's called 2-Row Barley. That means that the grain head itself has two rows of seeds. There are other types of barley, such as 6-Row. In Montana, most everyone raises 2-Row. Our friends in North Dakota raise 6-Row. From what I gleaned from Jeff's explanation, it sounds like 6-Row barley produces a higher yield. Makes sense-- more rows, more seeds. But 2-Row barley may have better, more consistent malting qualities, and that's the desired end-use for the barley we raise.

So, what happens during harvest is we cut the barley and send a sample to the malt plant with whom we have contracted our grain. They will test the sample to see if the grain we raised is sufficient for malting. They have a lot of stipulations, including test-weight, protein, moisture, plump vs. thin kernel size, germination... on and on. Jeff just showed me the list and after reading through it, I began to wonder how anyone makes malt grade, ever. But, I guess demand for beer doesn't go down, so sometimes the malt companies will be a little more lenient. Actually, it seems like you're less likely to get docked by the malt company than you are by the wheat buyers. So, there's that.

Something else I learned as I was doing a little research for this post is that malt is made from germinated barley kernels. So, at the malt plant, they soak the kernels in water so they germinate, then they dry them out with hot air. Something happens within the seed during germination process that makes it sweeter. When the malted grain reaches the desired dryness and color, it's ready to go.

We are at the point where almost all of our barley has been cut, but we're not sure if it will make malt grade yet. We have to send our samples in and then wait and see. If it doesn't make malt, then it'll be sold (for a lesser price, most likely) and used in animal feed. We hope that's not what happens.

I don't have a ton of photos from barley harvest because anyone who knows anything about barley kind of tries to stay away if they don't have to be involved. Barley dust is really itchy. It's kind of a burny, stingy itch that gets in the sweaty areas at the back of the neck or in the inside of the elbows and doesn't go away until you take a shower. This year, some of the barley cutting days were in the upper 90s, so that means more sweat and worse barley itch.

There was also the day that the air-conditioners broke. Our friend Brett helped us cut barley this year because we were planning on baling the barley straw and his combine makes a better straw-row than ours does. One day, both combines had been running hard all day long on a hot, hot day and then, oddly, around 7 p.m., the air-conditioners quit in both of them. Being in the glass-walled cab of a combine is like being an ant under a magnifying glass- it's hot! And there's no opening windows when you're cutting itchy barley. There was no going on that evening without the A.C. Honestly, I don't think anyone minded the early quitting time that day, though!

In this photo, Jeff is driving combine and Tom is in the truck, just across the road from Tom and Carol's house.
Taken on the first day of Barley harvest, July 31.

Right now, we are in another one of the harvest pauses that seem to be the norm this year as we've been working on other projects and waiting for the spring wheat to finish ripening. Once we get rolling on the spring wheat, probably by Thursday, I'm hoping we can just cut through it without any more multi-day pauses. I think everyone is ready to put the bookends on this harvest and move on. Stay tuned for more harvest posts as we plow ahead!