Planting garlic by GPS

One more time, the campaing of spring garlic has begun in La Mancha region. Definitely, this crop is the most important in our Village and a few villages more in Las Pedroñeras Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). So far everything is common. We would like to speak about one novelty... it is related to Luis Carlos, the first farmer who has planted garlic using an autosteer system in our village. The new technologies have been introduced for all crops and garlic is using them too.

We could visit Luis Carlos together with his brother and father when they were planting garlic. The autosteer system used is Cerea autosteer, we have spoken about previously in some posts (we use it in our tractors too). This autosteer system uses a smart receiver that works with GPS (American Service) and GLONASS (Russian Service) signal and it is helped by mobile 3G connection that allows it to connect with the nearest GNSS station of the Spanish Geodésica network so they can work using free RTK (L1) signal and the system has an accuracy of 5cm pass-pass after 3mins convergence.

The most remarkable difficulties in sowing tasks are firstly the distance between rows (45cm) and then the working speed (2,5km/h); on the other side cereal or sunflowers don’t have this problem. As farmer has to harrow this crop a few months after growing, the distance between rows is really important and they must have the maximum accuracy... we think you can see the result in our video.

Versión en español.

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Vintage days in "La Manchuela" region

This year we have repeatedly spoken about different works in vineyards... this crop requires a lot of tasks so winegrowers need a large variety of machinery to work in vineyards. In the end, the vintage is about to finish and it is the time to pick up the efforts performed during the year.

In this occasion, you can see pictures about "Los Transis" family (from Quintanar del Rey - Cuenca). They are vintaging with their new Pellenc Optimum 750 L grapes harvester. This family has a vineyard of 300he. They use two grape harvesters to carry out the vintage. Pictures are sent by our friend Jesús Ángel which are from the grape delivery day. Jesús Ángel is sales manager in Buraglia Martínez dealer (in Motilla del Palancar Village - Cuenca).

Quintanar del Rey Village is located in "La Manchuela" region. This area is between La Mancha and Cuenca's mountains range so it covers villages of Cuenca, Albacete and Valencia provinces. Definitely, it is an area where there are a lot of vineyards and where year by year wine is better under the Manchuela Denominación de Origen (Designation of Origin). We have to highlight the "San Isidro" Farming Cooperative of Quintanar del Rey was founded in 1950 and nowadays it has over 850 partners. The varieties of grapes used to produce white wines, rosé wines and red are: Bobal, Tempranillo, Syrah, Cabernet, Merlot, Macabeo and Garnacha.

As Jesús Ángel told us, the new Pellenc Optimum 750 L grape harvested (Perkins Tier IV engine) has new long flexible picking arms and a new shaking system. It has the longest lower sealing on the market (2.5m to 2.86m) so grapevines are really dry (witout grape-juice) after the vintage even when the Optimum works in vineyards of large yields and at high working speed.

Versión en español.

Duran Days. New Pöttinger Series Round Balers and McHale Series Mowers

About 3,000 people attended the event organized by Durán Maquinaria Agrícola Company in Santervás de Campos (Valladolid) where they could see almost all farming machinery this company import for Spanish farmers (Pöttinger, McHale, Pichón and Caruelle).

The demostration began with Pöttinger machinery of tillage and seed drills. Attendees saw different TERRADISC disc harrows working, SYNKRO stubble cultivator, SERVO plough together with AEROSEM and TERRASEM seed drills... the main disc was the new Pöttinger IMPRESS Series round balers. There are two models: MASTER and PRO. The Master model is designed for farmers and small outsourcing companies. On the other hand, the PRO model is ideal for big outsourcing companies. Finally, farmers could see the Pöttinger NOVACAT mower.

The workday continued with another important brand called McHale. The Fusion 3Plus and V640 round baler were working. Obviously, the main novelty showed by McHale was the new front and rear mowers PRO GLIDE (they have just begun to sell in Spain).

In the end, attendees could enjoy with Caruelle sprayers (OLYMPIA 400 AND OLYMPIA 600) that worked at 36m, slurry spreaders and muck spreader manufactured by a French brand called Pichón.

Versión en español.