We grow around 550 hectares (1350 acres) of onions at Elveden Farms each year which produce up to 25,000 tons of onions. Four double rows of seeds are sown in stone separated beds.
When the bulbs have swollen and the tops have died back, the two toppers cut the tops off and the windrower soon follows, gently lifting the onions and leaving them in one row to dry for a day or so.
With a target of 1,000 tons each day, the giant (but very manoeuvrable) harvester scoops up the row of onions and removes soil and weeds on their way up the elevator and gently into 18 ton container boxes towed along side.
The video below shows the harvester.
The boxes are transported to the farm store on skeleton trailers where they are lifted by a giant forklift and placed in rows in the store.
The box number, its weight, the position in the store and the field where the onions grew are all recorded on the computer. The onions are dried, cured and cooled in the boxes in the store until required for sale up to May the next year to supermarkets and processors. Our store at Elveden is called Avenue.
Below are a few more photographs showing some of the onion harvest:
Below are photographs showing the final stages of onion harvest, the tractors dropping the onions off at the store.
