Shops, Barns, Varmints, and Trucks

Swather ??

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Topic: Swather ??

Posted By: FREEDGUY
Subject: Swather ??
Date Posted: 22 May 2021 at 7:37pm

At the risk of upsetting some people and asking a stupid question , I saw pictures of an "old school" swather knocking down wheat(?), a few pics later was a MF 400 series cabless combine with a pick-up head on it (awesome pictures from that era BTW). What is the purpose of the "extra" harvesting step ? Pretty sure this was in the NW, but there's nothing like this done "here". Thanks

Replies:

Posted By: jiminnd
Date Posted: 22 May 2021 at 8:19pm

Used to a lot of that here, uneven ripening of grain, dried it out for even moisture when combining and also if some weeds they dried too. Don't know if anyone here even owns a swather anymore.

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1945 C, 1949 WF and WD, 1981 185, 1982 8030, unknown D14(nonrunner)

Posted By: FREEDGUY
Date Posted: 22 May 2021 at 8:39pm

Thanks Jim, did rain hamper the windrow or not so much as the crop was somewhat "bundled" ?

Posted By: PaulB
Date Posted: 23 May 2021 at 6:43am

In years way back, all grain was cut with a binder then shocked to dry. This also allowed the grain to be cut before many of the later maturing weeds came into seed, thus less of a problem when the dry shocks were run through the thresher.

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If it was fun to pull in LOW gear, I could have a John Deere.
If you can't make it GO... make it SHINY

Posted By: DMiller
Date Posted: 23 May 2021 at 7:23am

Have seen swathers in service upper NW and western states for the large bale hay farms, not much use of them in the Midwest but are a few and again only for haying or baling. Our renter has one will use occasionally to mow green soy or oats just as seed begins to form for silage baling.

Posted By: jiminnd
Date Posted: 23 May 2021 at 12:30pm

A little rain wasn't a big problem, if you got weeks of wet you could get sprouting in the windrow. Just took a few good drying days after swathing to be able to harvest in normal August heat, we raised proso millet, harvested in Sept or even Oct, that had to lay for a minimum of a week and sometimes 2.

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1945 C, 1949 WF and WD, 1981 185, 1982 8030, unknown D14(nonrunner)

Posted By: Ray54
Date Posted: 23 May 2021 at 7:04pm

Still some what common in the most northern part of the Canadian prairies. From my reading, generally better to have in a swath than standing if it gets left out over winter because of getting covered in snow. Harvested in fall is the best, but winter comes early and fast that far north.

Posted By: DonBC
Date Posted: 24 May 2021 at 4:14pm

Where I grew up in the southern part of Saskatchewan everything was swathed. I think that the primary reason was that fall weather brought shorter days and cooler temperatures and it took too long for the grain to 'finish' and by cutting it and letting it lay in the swath for a few days the grain dried and hardened. It was rare to see anyone 'strait' combining.

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Jack of all trades, master of none

Posted By: allisbred
Date Posted: 25 May 2021 at 6:58am

What grain are you guys up north cutting in September/Oct?

Posted By: modirt
Date Posted: 25 May 2021 at 8:29am

As recent as 50 to 60 years ago, when many farms still had livestock, forages were still a big part of a farm operation, and seed for these forages was commonly grown. Big money winner on our place was red clover seed. First cutting for high quality hay, 2nd cutting went to seed.

To get the best quality seed, clover was put in a swath, then harvested with a pickup on the combine. The platform reel came off, the belt like pickup with rake teeth went on. It was slow, dirty work. But by putting it in the swath, the seed heads would dry down and green plants would dry down, such that the seed would thrash out.....plant stems and leaves would shatter and turn do dust, vs grinding it through green and wet and plugging up the combine.......then finding a way to get the high moisture green seed dried down too.

Worked for a guy in the late 70's who swathed his fescue for the same reason. He left the stems with seed heads on top of the cut stems and leaves.......and to harvest, would come back in a couple weeks when it was all dried down. He simply slipped the combine head under those......no pickup. Running the combine and seed cleaner, also dirty work. But gave you better seed and higher yield than waiting for fescue to go to seed and combine while standing. You then had the problem of getting it to dry down in the pile vs. out in the field.

Will occasionally see one of the pickup attachments for an AC All Crop. Was one on local craigslist a few weeks back.