29 June 2022

Harvesting I. Mowing flat pod pea

After a whole year of work, the harvesting season arrives, starting with the mowing tasks for silage or haymaking. On this occasion, we visited our friend Jose Vicente in the farm where he works called Vega de San Martín. The farms are located in San Martín de la Vega (Madrid) and another one more next to the beautiful city of Cuenca (with a total amount of approximately 1,000 ha). They focus their agriculture on raising goats and then they use the milk to make fantastic cheeses under the brand called "Vega de San Martín". In addition, goats are also exported to countries such as Greece, Iran, Morocco, Romania, Guinea and Qatar.

As for the mowing work, we headed to a field on the farm near Cuenca, as you can see in the video, which was planted with "flat pod pea". We could see how their two Pöttinger mowers and the John Deere 6155M worked. It is impressive to see the mowers working at high speeds (around 15km/h) and the wide working width of the two mowers (around 7 meters). 

For those of you unfamiliar with the cultivation of pod pea (Lathyrus cicera L. and "Titarros" in Spanish), it is a pulse vegetables of Mediterranean origin (from the protein crop group),  it is mainly grown for animal feed and used both as a forage plant and as a grain crop. It is usually a plant that adapts very well to dry climates and is therefore a very good option for rainfed fields.

Finally, regarding to the disc mowers from the Austrian manufacturer Pöttinger, they are imported by Duran Maquinaria Agrícola company and they have a wide variety of configurations to suit the needs of any farmer, including mounted mowers, trailed or combined mowers with working widths ranging from 2.6 metres to 10 metres. We like them very much... they are very robust and convey that they are very well made. Really a premium product.

Versión en español.