Wednesday 28 August 2019
This week the glorious weather has meant that things on the Moulton College Farm have stepped up a notch. Yesterday our very own Combine Harvester was used – this is the first time in over five years that we have used our own combine, another great asset to Moulton’s facilities. The combine Harvester being used was a Case Axial Flow 9120, 485hp with a 30ft Header. Malcolm Pate, Farm Manager, drove the combine, cutting the Winter Wheat which is destined for milling into bread.
“It has yield mapping and auto steering capabilities which means we can fully map which areas of the fields were yielding good and which areas weren’t yielding quite so good. With this information we can then review the fields and make better management decisions on how to improve the poorer areas. By having our own combine especially this year with the catchy weather we were able to pick and choose the best times to harvest to enable use to harvest our crop at the optimum moisture content which needs to be below 15% for storage reasons.” Malcolm Pate, Farm Manager.
Over the next few days the farm is going to be very busy as they start making bales of straw and stacking them up. Moulton has always had a focus on environmental issues and we do our part in helping. Some of the straw we bale will be destined for the Power station at Ely which burns the bales and turns them into Electricity. We also have 3500 tons of recycled Gypsum being delivered. Gypsum is one of those rare materials that performs in all three categories of soil treatment (conditioning, correcting and fertilising). This is going to be spread in 2 weeks’ time as a fertiliser and soil conditioner. Let’s hope the sun keeps shining!!
Are you fascinated about plant and crop cultivation, livestock care and farm management? If you want the ideal start to a career in agriculture, our courses cover an introduction to wildlife maintenance and conservation, livestock and crop husbandry and estate management. Apply now for September 2019.
