On Apr 20, 7:49*pm, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article , "Colbyt" wrote:

Excuse my ignorance. *I thought combines stripped the seed from the harvest
and then baled the straw; an all in one process.

Nope. They strip the grain, dump it in a hopper, shear the stalks off, and
spew them out the back.



Do they discard the straw which is then baled by a different baler? A
regular hay baler. *That seems somewhat more labor intensive than I would
have thought modern farm machines would be.

That's often not relevant. Come harvest time, the emphasis is on getting the
grain harvested and on its way to market as quickly as possible. Baling the
straw as the wheat is harvested takes time and manpower away from the much
more important task of harvesting the grain. There's plenty of time to come
back and get the straw later when the wheat is taken care of.

A lot of folks won't bale the straw at all, preferring to turn it
under to improve the soil. I depend on the few who will, for animal
bedding & tree mulch, fortunately I have found a few grain farmers
who will round bail straw. For what it is worth I prefer the string,
the mesh seems to always get caught under the bale & then becomes part
of the ground & takes forever to break down. The wire is handy for
repairs, as a companion for duct tape, but is rare these days.