Lee Arbuckle, was stumped. He was trying to harvest green needle grass seed on his family ranch near Alzada, but his socks were doing a better job of collecting the wild seed than his farm equipment.
That's the problem with wild grass, Arbuckle said recently; the burrs and tendrils that allow it to spread so well by hitching a ride on an animal's haunch or floating with the wind also make it very difficult to feed into conventional farm machinery.
His frustration got Arbuckle thinking. What if there was a way of pulling the wild seed from the plant instead of cutting it? A farmer could then pluck the seed with a firm mechanical grasp, leaving less to fall to the ground.
That led to Arbuckle's one-of-a-kind Native Seedster, a specialized harvester manufactured in Billings that could change the way seed farmers harvest native grass. The grass is a premium-priced crop used to reclaim land damaged by forest fire, mining, road equipment and over-farming.
"They say build a better mousetrap. Well, this is the first mousetrap. It's a breakthrough," Arbuckle said. "There are about 197 species of grass. Of the 197, there are 104 that have bristles or awns. It's all of the stuff that sticks to your socks when you go out to the grass, and those things drive a combine nuts."
Working with his wife, Maggie, Arbuckle created a seedster with a trundling brush and comb that turn against each other like the rollers in an old-fashioned washing machine. Marketed as the Native Seedster, their product not only pulls the mature seed from the grass top, it also leaves the rest of the plant behind to produce more seed and continue its work securing erodible soil.
The seedster allows a farmer attempting to reclaim vulnerable land to harvest seed from what has been planted and plant those seeds elsewhere - a plus, because natural grass seed can be extremely expensive.
The native grass seed market can be lucrative, with some varieties selling for as much as $40 a pound. The crop's commercial development dates back to the 1970s when the federal government began seeding wild grasses, like crested wheatgrass and Russian wild rye, in vulnerable lands to prevent soil erosion.
Initially, a handful of varieties were used to reclaim areas damaged by forest fires, mining or highway projects. Those varieties weren't necessarily native to the areas where they were being seeded, which raised questions about introducing foreign plant species that could potentially choke out grasses that were actually native to the area.
Eventually, federal and state governments began demanding that only grasses native to an area be planted for reclamation. Today, reclamation contracts even specify the blend of grass varieties to be reseeded in a prescribed area so the end result matches the surrounding environment.
"The Derby fire is a classic example," said Scott McDonnell, who sells native grass seed east of Three Forks. "The seed needed to be blended together, ready to plant and packaged and delivered, as spec'ed by the contractor, to the site in a semitrailer so it could be distributed by helicopter. It's a very complicated business."
McDonnell manages Circle S Seeds of Montana, which added native grasses to its seed product lineup nearly 40 years ago. The Derby Fire, which ravaged Stillwater County in 2006, burned 223,570 acres. Circle S played a sizable role in the area's reclamation. |
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Forest fire contracts, or the lack thereof, can determine whether a native grass grower has a good year. The federal Bureau of Land Management is the largest buyer of native grass seed in the nation. Because reseeding contracts are so variety-specific, the payout only comes for seed farmers who are growing the right kind of grass.
A farmer doesn't profit until his particular variety of grass is needed, which is one on the business challenges grass growers face. Unlike grain farmers, grass growers can't unload their crop at the local elevator for the going rate.
"It's difficult, the price goes up and down with the demand," said Arden Bruce, of Townsend-based Bruce Farms.
And the challenges don't begin in the market. Native grass doesn't have the crop advantages of wheat, which over centuries has been developed for optimum harvest. With wheat, the plants grow to a uniform height. All the grain kernels ripen at the same time, meaning the ones at the top of the plant don't shatter and fall to the ground before the ones further down are ready. Likewise, the ones at the bottom of the head aren't still too green to harvest while the rest of the crop is ready or past due.
Even wheat's stem is ready to for cutting at the right time, golden at harvest and easy for the combine.
Natural grass seed matures sporadically, with the seeds at the very top ready to fall from the plant, while seeds in the middle are just ripe and the lower ones are too green to cut. The stem remains green. A perennial crop, it also takes two to three years to mature before yielding a harvest. And the grass ripens at different heights.
Bruce said the most effective way for him to cut hundreds of acres of seed is still to swath and cure the crop in windrows, then run it through a combine. Both Bruce and McDonnell admire Arbuckle's work but say the seedster doesn't handle a big enough swath to tackle a large commercial crop.
But the Native Seedster is rapidly evolving. The Arbuckles began with a harvester scarcely larger than a medium-size bucket on a front-end loader, then went wider and added what is best described as a tractor-sized, seed-sucking vacuum cleaner with a hose shaking from the seedster to a tank behind the tractor cab. The latest version is compact, vacuum-free, harvests an area slightly wider than 15 feet, unloads in five minutes and cleans out in 10 minutes. The entire apparatus fits on the arm of a loading tractor.
Bruce is familiar with the first version of the seedster, which was tested on his property. That version was just about a fourth as wide as the current seedster and not nearly as efficient as the newer, wider version, which is marketed to commercial seed growers.
The Arbuckles have been able to develop their product rapidly by filming the seed in real time as it passes into their seedster. A trial-and-error process that might have taken decades has instead taken a couple of years.
To get the seedsters into fields across the country this year, Native Seedsters will be locating copies of the machine across the United States in six regions. Lee Arbuckle said by making the seedster available in select areas, the company will be able to quickly gather data on how its machine performs on different grasses in different conditions.
The company has already developed a seedster capable of harvesting switchgrass, a second-generation biofuel crop.
Published on Sunday, May 31, 2009.
Last modified on 5/31/2009 at 12:12 am
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