So yesterday afternoon, which was Sunday, the decision was made to harvest the Navy Bean fertilizer experiment. The decision was made by Tim and Stephanie as the forecast was for rain on Monday. (And the forecast was right.) Well this is a three person job, so I was happy to be person #3.
Tim drove the combine, Stephanie was in the grain cart recording plot weights and I drove the tractor pulling the cart. It has been a while since I did any actual NCRS work, so it was fun for me. (Besides, I got to listen to the Lions lose on the radio instead of watching it at home.)
It's been shown many times here in the past, but for a refresher, the beans from each plot are dumped into the grain cart that has a scale with two pound increments. Stephanie enters the weight on the i-pad and collects a sample for moisture check.
For increased accuracy, only the middle four rows of the six row plots are harvested for yield determination. The outside border rows are removed after each round. I will say again that it really helps having the Wind Reel system on the front that blows air to help feed the cut beans into the combine. (It's those silver tubes on the front there that blows air from a turbine.) Hopefully you can read the results in this year's Research Report.
