Farmer Tom, our neighbor who crops our fields, waited as long as he could to harvest the field corn. With the slow start to the season, all the corn was pushed to the very edge of the season - ran into a couple of old geezers at the merc about a week ago, they were talking about how they barely got the last of their corn in, on the day of the first snow.
Anyway...Tom uses a mid-size combine to take the field down. There are some monster combines out there, I've got a photo of one somewhere. These trees are the same ones you may have seen in the post of fall color, and also the same ones where that turkey in florescent orange was perched.
These are Tom's gravity boxes. They are called that, because the corn, or other grain, unloads itself by pouring out the chute with no assistance other than gravity. Nifty.
When the hopper on the harvester is full, Tom brings the combine over to the gravity boxes, where augers and the chute make short work of emptying the corn into the boxes.
It's rather impressive, watching that flow of golden corn. I really don't know the mechanics of how the combine works, all I know is that it's an efficient machine, makes crop farming on a large scale possible. We'd love to use Tom's team of Belgiums to work the fields, but it would take weeks instead of hours, to do what the machines do.
Then it's hustle back out to the field, get another load, and so on until the corn is all in. It took Tom about 2 hours to do the approximately 8 acres.
From the fields, the corn is hauled to Tisch Mills grain elevators, which are only about a mile and a half from the our fields. (note: this isn't Tom unloading, it was another neighbor) There, the gravity boxes are pulled over the grates, where the door is cranked open...
and the corn flows down and into the grate...
(oops, this one is out of sequence - I was impressed with the bald tire on the back box - this one has been over the road a few times, that's a lot of years of service.)
where a huge auger underground moves the corn into the chamber where it is moved by other augers into the drying chambers.
That's Fred, with the scoop, whom I pestered for several days for information on just how this all worked. Each time I happened to be going to the merc, if I saw Fred's truck at the scale house I'd pull in and bug him about what he was doing, and take lots of pictures. I told him it was for a report to my West coast family. He was amused, I'm sure. Once I heard him telling one of the farmers who was waiting for his truck to finish unloading, that I was from Idaho. I had to break the news that it was Washington and Oregon. That was even more amusing. They had an idea that at least in Idaho there were crops. They were of the opinion that Washington and Oregon only had rain... This particular farmer had fields much like ours, not a really big operation.Anyway, Fred takes a sample from each load, and tests it for moisture.
This little machine is amazing. The corn is poured into it, and in about 2 minutes it spits out the humidity content, and some other information. This allows Fred to calculate how long and at what temperature the load will need drying. He likes the corn to come in at about 19-20% moisture. This load was 19%. It also makes a difference what the growing time is for the corn. This particular load was 90-day corn. The two gravity boxes brought in about 3400 pounds
This truck load was from a really big farm, from farther away. We see quite a few of them coming in. The Tisch Mills grain elevators are the only ones left in this area, grain is hauled in from 50 miles around. The truck was hauling 120-day corn, it came in at 27% moisture - rather high, but not uncommon with the longer ripening time, according to Fred. I haven't figured that one out yet, either. The load scaled in at 83,000 pounds.
This is the drying unit, and I'm afraid I forgot to ask what they use for fuel. Next time I see Fred, I'll ask. I go down to the mill every once in awhile to pick up chicken feed, sometimes he's there. It's a family operation, like a lot of other businesses around here. (HEY. MY PICTURE DISAPPEARED)The elevator system is fascinating to me. There are pipes and augers running from the drying units to each storage elevator, and there are different grains in each one. They handle mostly wheat, corn, and oats here.
The big truck/trailer units unload by a moving belt with big flaps - like flippers. The corn feeds down the sloping sides onto the belt, and is moved out to fall into the grate. These are the last few kernals from the load.
Part of the process was familar to me, from Dennis' years of trucking. The loads come across the scale on the way in, then after unloading the truck/trailers or tractor/gravity boxes go back over the scale for empty weight, then they know just how much corn (or whatever) was unloaded. This was a relatively quiet day; when harvest is in full swing there will be a line-up of rigs clear out to the main road, waiting their turn on the scale.
It seems that depending on how far the farm is from the elevators dictates the mode of hauling. It the farm is close, it's usually by tractor. From a little farther away, it may be a truck pulling the box. It's a rather slow progress, with either way of pulling, because the gravity boxes are kinda unstable - they swerve a lot. Makes me a bit nervous to follow a string of them.
And then there's the long-timers. This old workhorse has been around for a few years.
There are a few farmers around who still use "solar dryers". These are the guys, smaller operations, who grow the corn for feeding their own herds. They have grinders to handle the shelled corn, and mix their own feed. This farm happens to be the one next door to Carrie and Brent's farm. They have a herd of Holsteins, milking about 60 head right now. That's where our milk comes from.
Corn is important here. The fields typically are rotated from corn to oats to wheat to hay/pasture and back to corn again. I'm happy to see the old ways haven't been totally abandoned in favor of bigger faster operations. It's the smaller family-run farms that keep the traditions alive. And sometimes, they are the most economical methods, when you get right down to it.
I asked Fred what happened to the grain after being dried.
The big truck/trailer units unload by a moving belt with big flaps - like flippers. The corn feeds down the sloping sides onto the belt, and is moved out to fall into the grate. These are the last few kernals from the load.
Part of the process was familar to me, from Dennis' years of trucking. The loads come across the scale on the way in, then after unloading the truck/trailers or tractor/gravity boxes go back over the scale for empty weight, then they know just how much corn (or whatever) was unloaded. This was a relatively quiet day; when harvest is in full swing there will be a line-up of rigs clear out to the main road, waiting their turn on the scale.
It seems that depending on how far the farm is from the elevators dictates the mode of hauling. It the farm is close, it's usually by tractor. From a little farther away, it may be a truck pulling the box. It's a rather slow progress, with either way of pulling, because the gravity boxes are kinda unstable - they swerve a lot. Makes me a bit nervous to follow a string of them.
And then there's the long-timers. This old workhorse has been around for a few years.
There are a few farmers around who still use "solar dryers". These are the guys, smaller operations, who grow the corn for feeding their own herds. They have grinders to handle the shelled corn, and mix their own feed. This farm happens to be the one next door to Carrie and Brent's farm. They have a herd of Holsteins, milking about 60 head right now. That's where our milk comes from.
Corn is important here. The fields typically are rotated from corn to oats to wheat to hay/pasture and back to corn again. I'm happy to see the old ways haven't been totally abandoned in favor of bigger faster operations. It's the smaller family-run farms that keep the traditions alive. And sometimes, they are the most economical methods, when you get right down to it.
I asked Fred what happened to the grain after being dried. The corn is stored for feed and seed, most of it going for cow feed. There is an ethanol plant in Oshkosh (about 2 hours away) where the rest of the corn ends up - that's a pretty good market. Although Fred reported that the failing economy has really knocked the bottom out of the grain market - when Wall Street falls, so do the farm profits. Fred said it was going to be a really tough year for the farmers.
The wheat, which is hard red winter wheat, mostly goes to a cookie plant in Milwaukee. The soft white and soft red wheat that is typically used for bread making is grown more in Kansas/Nebraska. The oats are mostly shipped to the Quaker Oats mill in Illinois, to be made into rolled oats. A certain amount of all the grain is ground there at the mill, for various feeds. You can custom order what you want in your chicken or cow or horse feed, and they fill up your bags. Pretty nifty, eh?
Living right in the middle of where our Wheaties and Corn Flakes and oatmeal are grown is very reassuring. We like grinding wheat to make our own flour for bread and cookies and pancakes and waffles. Living close to the land is a good life.
No comments:
Post a Comment