Picking up windrows
For buckwheat harvest, a standard combine is often used. However, when the buckwheat seed ripens before the leaves fall off, it can be advantageous to windrow.
This document shows pictures of how a pick up attachment works on a combine. This attachment is still manufactured and widely used in the upper midwest. In the northeast, they are rare and usually bought used. The one in these pictures is an old model.
Click on the pictures to see a larger image.
1. A pickup attachment on a combine. The combine is driving so that the
buckwheat heads face toward the combine head. To the left is a windrow
after passing through the combine.
2. The windrow being fed over the head. The mechanism and the ground speed
are maintained so that the straw flows through the combine with minimum
disruption.
3. The Pick up head in operation. At the front is a rotating cylinder that
has metal tines flexibly mounted. These pick up the windrow. (Usually the
windrow sits higher on the stubble, a severe thunderstom drove this windrow
down near the ground.) The mechanism over the bed gently moves the windrow
along into the mouth of the combine. The straigher the straw enter the
cylinder, the less trouble there is with wrapping.
These photographs were taken October 4, 1997.
Prepared by Thomas Björkman
Updated October 10, 1997