A double harvest

My first seed harvest of the season (and fifth year of doing this) got underway today with a trip to the very tip of the Cotswolds. The site was an absolutely enormous and stunning meadow, packed with pretty much every species you might expect.

There were two harvesters today and four volunteers. We set up a giant tarpaulin next to a small windbreak scrub and configured two drop off points for the seed. It took a bit of fiddling around to get it exactly right for the trucks to pass through safely, but in the end it was a very efficient production line.

The yellow rattle was both in abundance and in seed, so right from the start the hauls were plentiful.

Both trucks came one after the other so there was really no chance to take a break in between drop offs.

We took mid morning tea and lunch breaks, and stopped harvesting at 2.30pm. I would estimate easily 100kg from the day’s work. I have never seen so much since I did a super hot day in 2022 where there was a similar haul from one harvester.

There was a good team on it today. Everyone kept grinding right until the end. There is a plan to return here again in a few weeks after a few more species have gone to seed.