So, the crop’s in!
We ended up getting 2400 Kilos of Wheat and about 600 Kg of Chana. Think this may have been our best effort in so many years. This despite the rains and bad weather at the end of the season, just before harvest. Luckily for us, the wheat survived the storms. We had one patch in one acre of the wheat which collapsed due the high winds. The other acre performed better. The only loss, in that acre, was on account of my Farm Pets (Dogs) who enjoyed running through the wheat and spoiling some parts. What the Hell! They need their exercise and game time too.
There was widespread damage to wheat in our and neighbouring villages. Would estimate that the loss was between 15 to 30%. I think the damage was more for farmers that had sowed earlier. Though I’m no expert!
Wheat and Chana were cut using traditional sickles, by hand. Video of the cutting is available on our instagram post and link is available on the home page. Post cutting these bunches of wheat are collected in one place and are put through a thresher which separates the wheat from the chaff. The straw being lighter, flies away from the thresher whereas the wheat, being heavier, fall under the thresher and is put into bags and then to storage. The chaff goes into storage too. Key feed for my cattle.
The Chana was collected together and run over by our tractor. This helped in breaking the dried plants into smaller pieces. Our hard working team of farms hands, then goes through the dried leaves, sticks and seed to separate the sticks. Thereafter the mix of Chana and dried plant matter is tossed in the wind resulting in separating the lighter plants matter from the seed. During this process, these guys keep waiting for the wind to pick up so that with every gust more seed can be separated. Once is seeds are separated, we bagged them and brought them to storage.
This completes the Harvest. Next step is to make is saleable. Once again, manual labour is involved in segregating the good from the bad. This involves using various sized sieves and sifting through every grain.
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