Do you want to get into direct seeding but are having a hard time seeing over the mountain of dollars needed to make a system work? Following are some low budget ideas that, along with some shop time, would help set up residue management in your seeding system.
Ed Beauchesne and his wife Marguerite are veterans at direct seeding. They farm at Albertville northeast of P.A. Of course they grow pretty big straw crops some years. When Ed started direct seeding he was threshing with a John Deere 7721. He beefed up the straw chopper on this combine by bolting 2 swather knife sections on the end of each hammer. He says they don't cut his straw up too fine. He likes to see short pieces if straw that flow easily through his seeding tool, and insulate his ground but don't form such a thick mat of chaff that they seal out the heat of the sun. He also says this retrofit gave him more consistent spread whether the straw was tough or dry. The hammers have a little more weight so they have more momentum in tougher conditions and don't pull back. In fact Ed says he seeded canola and flax into his heaviest cereal straw this spring with great success. The area north of P.A. had very high rainfall last growing season so there was certainly plenty of residue for them to manage!
The Beauchesnes have out grown their 7721 by one or two models and tried some of the newest and best straws chopper options the manufacture had to offer but have come back to this simple retrofit chopper. They have the standard chopper on a 9610 John Deere. They also straight cut and swath only 25¢ wide. Ed has removed the hammers and cut them off so that they are just long enough to bolt on a standard swather knife section on either side of the hammer. The unit will end up with the same clearance from the chopper housing as the original hammer. He bolts the sections on with 2 of the same bolts and locking nuts the sections would use on the swather knife. The bolts are in a line at right angles to the long direction of the hammer.
One of the big considerations in this procedure is to keep the chopper balanced. Ed keeps the hammers in triplets as each set of 3 comes off in its line around the rotor. After Ed cuts the hammers and adds the knives, he uses his grain moisture meter weigh scale to weigh each set of 3 retrofitted hammer units. He wants each set of 3 to match the weight of the other sets. He spot welds washers to the hammers to adjust the weight. Ed says his chopper comes out balanced after this procedure. A professional balancer who has checked out Ed's chopper says that the idea is to work from the outsides of your rotor to the center keeping each pair of sets equal in weight. The idea is you take the 2 outside sets of 3 hammers and get each set weighing the same. Then move in to the next set and do the same till you are at the center. Of course it is still a good idea to get your chopper balanced. Plan ahead as there are companies that have on-site balancing to check out your workmanship.
Ed says that he should be able to get about 3000 acres out of each side of the knife sections. One of the things Ed does is to retract the stationary knives when combining peas. Usually if you are combining peas the straw is dry enough to shatter quite well without the stationary knives and your chopper will stand up much better to the odd little stone or lifter you might put through the combine.
Ed originally retrofitted his chopper after seeing what his neighbour Roger Godin of Henribourg had done with his TR 86. Roger started out with a similar set up on his hammers as Ed has. He found that he could only get about 700 acres before he needed to turn the knives around so he has now removed the stationary knives and put 4 knife sections on the end of each hammer with a 3/16² spacer between the outside and inside knife. He says this certainly gives him more acres before he needs to flip the knives although straw chopping is not quite as good. He also recommends using L9 bolts to fasten the sections to the hammer as they stand up better to rocks he puts through the combine. There certainly is some danger that one of these knives will fly off. No one should ever be behind or in the spreading pattern of the chopper.
Many direct seeders in the northeast region of the province have included a heavy harrow as part of their residue management. The Beauchesnes have found that they have gotten away with a set of diamond harrows. Ed says he pulls his diamond harrows at 10 mph and they do quite an adequate job of spreading straw. He stresses that they have a good enough system on the combine that they do not harrow every field but if they see that the straw is not spread to their satisfaction they will run over the field with the diamond harrows right behind the combine. They will even shut the combine down if necessary to do this harrowing.
It is hard to imagine that there is a set of diamond harrows heavy enough to stand up to 10 mph but Ed says he does have a good bar with the supporting brace on top. He is prepared to fix up broken chains and whatever else is necessary after every field. And he is very happy with this low budget straw spreader.
The only other major consideration in your residue handling system is a chaff spreader. If something new is out of your budget there are a number of options for some type of spinner to spread that chaff to either side of the combine. These ideas should keep anyone from using the excuse that "residue management costs too much to CONSERVE MY SOIL".