As July came to a close, the barley trucks began rolling into the Briess Wyoming Barley Operations in Ralston, WY. Harvest is now in full swing and the trucks will be lined up bringing fresh barley in off the fields.
With modern technology, each load of barley takes about 4 minutes to sample before processing the truck. Time is critical during harvest season, especially when you have hundreds of trucks ready to unload.
Todd Marsh (left) brought in one of the first loads of barley for the season. Pictured with Alex Preis celebrating the harvest. (Date photoed: 7/24/17)
Alex Preis of Briess, examining a barley sample.
With hundreds of trucks lining up for harvest delivery, the folks in the lab stay busy. Tammy Schalla and the rest of the Wyoming Lab Team will run a series of tests to ensure the barley meets all quality specs.
Brent Lindgren’s puppy, TyTy, loves riding shotgun when it’s time to bring the barley in.
It’s always nice to see friendly faces, such as Randy Bauwens, around the Wyoming Barley Operations during harvest season.
A barely truck pulls up to the weighing station, where the yellow lines are. The drivers will stop in the office (building right) and submit their paperwork for processing while the lab works on performing quality tests before accepting the load.
Unloading barely in the “pit.” From here the barley will be moved to the appropriate storage bin based variety of barley or desired specs the maltster is looking for to keep separated.
The Briess crew at the Wyoming Barley operations will unload hundreds of barley trucks over the course of July and August.
Each load of barley takes about 5-8 minutes to unload depending on which bin they are going to.
Neil Christofferson brings in a load of barley from his son’s, Josh Christofferson’s, farm. Josh is a first-generation barley grower who calls on his dad to help with the barley harvest.
