Re: Straw stacks

Posted by DanielW on July 19, 2023 at 04:45:25 from (24.51.248.85):

In Reply to: Straw stacks posted by showcrop on July 19, 2023 at 04:13:58:

We threshed all our grain (admittedly never more than 20 acres) until 2004, when we finally joined the

20th century with a pair of Allis all-crop combines. Most folks who threshed in this area did it the

same way we did - having the thresher inside the barn: The grain would be directed into a granary

room at one side of the barn, and the straw would be directed out back to a loose pile in the back of

the barn where it could be tossed down for bedding. One of the less-enjoyable jobs was building the

straw in the 'straw shed' (the back portion of the bank barn where the straw went). Back there with

pitch forks moving and building the stack so it wasn't just a random loose pile, with straw blowing

in your face and the thresher howling away beside you. Ughh... Add some allergies to the mix and it

made for a pretty bad day.



There's a pair of brothers not far from my father's who specialize in rebuilding binders & threshers

and shipping them to the Mennonites/Amish. They still thresh their grain. They'll blow the straw

stack right into the barn yard (we used to do this occasionally years ago) where the cattle loaf. The

cattle will pick at the straw stack over winter and it will be pretty much gone by spring. Definitely

not the greatest feed in the world, but it does significantly reduce the rate at which they eat hay.

These brothers (like us) don't spray and typically underseed their grains with hay, so there will be

some hay (mostly clover) in with the straw, which adds a little more incentive for the cattle to pick

through it at their leisure. Back in the day before spraying was more popular I suspect this was also

the case.



I suspect when threshing was done in an open field away from the animals they'd often load it onto a

wagon and bring it in loose, just like we used to do with loose hay - but without the benefit of a

hayloader hitched behind the wagon following the windrow. Or baled as you say with a stationary

baler. Once at a show I fed the straw blower straight into the auger of a square baler and had it

running while we threshed. It worked ok, but it was just a show and we weren't throwing sheaves fast

enough to give the baler a full load. Next year we just blew it in a pile and slowly ran the baler

through it once the show was over.



This post was edited by DanielW on 07/19/2023 at 05:21 am.

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