Great videos-you've got some serious heat in that dung heap.Will the seed you are planting,still be harvested this year or will it be next spring?

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Originally posted by taralec:
Great videos-you've got some serious heat in that dung heap.Will the seed you are planting,still be harvested this year or will it be next spring?

Next spring around the end of June.

Farmer,

Hope all is well. I am not planting winter canola this year but planning on planting another 40 acres in the spring. I think I am getting the hang of it. It is a real experience combining with my old Allis All crop pull. I think that might be the ticket for the Camelina. I have enough Camelina for 20 acres and may try it in the spring. I finally got my press running. I haven't hooked up the extruder but I am just cold pressing. I have about 12 tons ready to press and we are still harvesting. Thanks for all the help. Just ordered a plate filter. I will let you know.

Food Grade- The only thing our local guys wanted was a commercial sink, the light covers, sealed floor and walls...not too bad.

Take care,

Bill Koucky
Traverse City, MI

Bill,
Good to hear you are pressing oil. I have heard of very high organic oil prices. Crazy high prices. You could be sitting on a gold mine. If you have not planted any GMO stuff you might want to stay away from it if you can. If the food thing works out biodiesel could be the last thing on your mind.

Locally grown Canola biodiesel, preliminary cold test results: at -9c (15f) the sample turned cloudy, about like the Camelina at -6c (20f). Still watery/runny, so possibly not filter-plugging yet. This biodiesel was from the same processor that pressed and processed the Camelina mentioned earlier. Tomorrow I'll run it down in temperature a bit further.

I'm beginning to conclude that Canola has better low temperature performance than Camelina. We'll see.

One business model I'd like to suggest is to promote the use of locally grown Canola and Camelina as local fryer oils. Arrange with the restaurants to supply them with a fresh supply of fryer oil and use the lightly used oil for fuel stock. I'll be working with my used oil source to try cooking in locally grown Canola (he already uses commercial Canola fryer shortening), and to try Camelina. Camelina leaves a very different flavor. The question is whether it would be more popular than Soy or Canola. It's heathier, but people may not like the "strange" flavor. I actually prefer it. Since he has 3 fryers, he could load one with Camelina and advertise "heart healthy" deep fried chicken, or "regular" (mostly soy-based. He only uses Canola for his Friday night fish fry).

This intermediate frying step would require food grade oil, which costs more. Will it make economic sense when the whole cycle is analyzed? I'm not sure, but will let you know. We might be able to reduce our dependance on foreign oil, that is soy oil imported from the midwest.
Cheers,
JohnO
(FF: I believe this Camelina is the same stock you're growing, so the results should be similar)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by william Koucky:
Farmer,

/Hope all is well. I am not planting winter canola this year but planning on planting another 40 acres in the spring. I think I am getting the hang of it. It is a real experience combining with my old Allis All crop pull. I think that might be the ticket for the Camelina. I have enough Camelina for 20 acres and may try it in the spring.

Bill Koucky/

Hello Bill and Fuelfarmer,

I've been trying my hand at "personal oil production" on my little farm. This past spring, I planted six acres of Camelina, harvested it with my AC 60, pressed it and are now running B100 from my little stock pile. Lost a lot of yield tweaking my fifty year old combine. Any insight as to what you can teach a hobbiy farmer and his "new" toy? I used a brillion overseeder to seed, an All Crop 60 to harvest(being pulled by green), a model 80 2-3 ton chinese press,and a Bio pro.
What kind of settings are you using on your AllCrop for the Camelina and for your Canola? Yaz is a friend and the All crop is as pretty as a thirty year old ( lots new parts,paint covered rust etc). The Brillion worked well and I found a decent setting. The Bio Pro is proving its' worth. The press is a small beast but the Changfa is awesome. My problem are those tinnie, tiny seeds and screens, cylinder settings and of coarse leaks.

John

PS If I skrewed up the quote please forgive me.

I am no expert with the All Crop but it was fun. I got the parts from Yaz. It work fine and cleaned better than a lot of the canola I have been getting from local farmers using newer machines. I am going to try the camelina but it is not recognized as a meal product and I think it might be hard to sell. I am working on refining the canola. It still has a strong flavor. I am running about 4 tons this week to get some oil to play with. Still working on the press. My auger belt stopped and I backed up. Still haven't gotten the hang of this. Been working more on the harvest end.

Hello,
Thanks for your response. It seems all the experts of the Allcrops are retired or have passed. Have you seen Camelina up close, it is about the size of red clover? I made a custom screen of tightly spaced sixteenth inch perforation that I'm going to try this year. The Camelina meal has an almondy taste that I will learn later if it comes out in my Jersey milk.
What screen settings and final screen did you use for Canola 1/12 inch 9/64 ? Just trying to cut back on my experimenting as I waste a lot of seed.
PS If you have a 7/64 inch screen, I give you a hundred bucks for it. No, Yaz doesn't have one.
John

Camelina is smaller than canola. I think a 7/64th might be okay. I don't have one. I think these guys in Mt. Pleasant, MI might be able to make one up. Might be expensive. I used the 9/64 for my combine. I get my screens mixed up between the cleaner and the combine but I think I used the 9/64 in the combine.

Photos of some Fall 09 crops. Soybeans need to be harvested now. Canola will be harvested next spring
Winter canola




Soybeans

That's almost as pretty as Michigan FF............... The poor guys who have my land leased can't get their beans off, it has been raining enough for the past month that even my sand is to wet, every combine with tracks around here is running around the clock, combines with tracks grain wagons with tracks and tractors with tracks, it's gotta be a pain in the butt.

We are not wet. Because of the very wet spring the crops are very late and the stems are tough in the beans or the corn is still not dry.

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So using modest numbers, we'll figure on getting 3500 bu. of beans off of 80 acres, and 3500 bu. of canola from the same acreage, the beans should make at least 2600 gal of fuel and the canola 5200 gal

Since my job went down the toilet back in August I'm pondering other possibilities. The canola is a better oil yielder, double the soybeans?

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The canola is a better oil yielder, double the soybeans?

Yes canola is the better crop if oil is what you want. Canola contains around 40% oil and soybeans contain around 20% oil.

With canola it looks like the oil yield per acre would be @60/gallon.Not bad if you can use it as SVO but as biodiesel the processing costs change the economics at least at today's prices. Then we can't be short sighted either. Interesting situation.

Ted Durfey (Madison Farms, Eastern Washington) grew an enormous test field of Canola, varying irrigation, fertilizer and Canola strains. His conclusion was that deficit watering made the most oilseed. The plants looked terrible, but Canola maximizes seed output when stressed. His yield averaged 3000#/ac. Oil yield worked out to 120-160 gallons/ac. Some test plots reached 4000#/ac!

It's an interesting business, if you can afford the bad years.

Cheers,
JohnO

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It's an interesting business, if you can afford the bad years.

The way I see farming in my area even the good years can be bumpy ,but that's dairy farming ,mainly, which I tried myself .

The way I see it ,canola is mainly a crop for the northern regions and soybeans need hot summers so the two are opposite when it comes to the lenght of the growing season. Canola would be better suited for my area .At least thats the way I see it.