Berry Binder Harvests Haskaps

Berry Binder Harvests Haskaps CROPS New Crops Pat Robertson’s friend Hamish Graham started growing haskap berries and needed a harvester to bring in the berries So Robertson built one in his farm shop to harvest trees that are about 4 to 8 ft tall He calls it the Berry Binder because like the old grain binders that were ground-driven the machine uses ground drive to run its conveyors “This means you need less hydraulics to run the machine All that is needed is a small tractor with the hydraulic capacity to supply roughly 5 to 6 gal of hydraulic oil per minute ” he says “This runs the rotor with fingers that shake the fruit of the bush and the suction fan for removing leaves and twigs from the fruit The large conveyor is raised and lowered with a 12-volt actuator and both ground-driven conveyors are engaged and disengaged with a 12-volt actuator “We harvested part of a 50-acre field and took off about 13 000 lbs of haskaps ” he notes “The machine travels around 1/2 to 1-mph so it’s capable of harvesting a lot of fruit in an hour It is also very easy to clean at the end of the day with a pressure washer It takes only minutes ” The cost of the machine is not set Interested buyers should contact him “We have not harvested raspberries or small Saskatoon bushes with it yet but feel it would do nicely with both — especially Saskatoons ” Robertson says “We would like to get some of these machines out to some growers for next season He is also in the process of building a larger model with no pto required Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Berry Binder Pat Robertson Box 212 Birch Hill Sask S0J 0G0 Canada ph 306 961-2102; patrobertsonbh@sasktel net

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