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Harvesting Corn

We finished up harvesting corn last week before the rains came. We have had beautiful fall weather (in fact, it was 63 degrees this morning when I got up), and even with the recent rains, harvesting is happening all around us.

Since we are small farmers, we run a small combine. Four rows at a time, back and forth. This is the same combine (pronounced COM-bine) that we use to harvest wheat, rye, oats, and our edible beans. We have three interchangable "heads" that we swap out depending on what we are harvesting. 


When the combine hopper (storage area) is full, we unload into a waiting wagon.


Here's a short video of what unloading looks like. I grew up playing in the neighbor's corn wagons at harvest time. We now know that it is dangerous to play in grain (the larger the amount, the greater the danger). Sometimes the grain bridges up, leaving air pockets underneath. When the bridge collapses, people can be buried in grain and will suffocate.


This is what the harvested corn looks like in the wagon.



These wagons are called gravity flow wagons (or boxes). This short video shows us unloading the corn into a grate in the ground that leads to an auger that empties into the grain handling system. We can then decide to store the grain in a large bin, or dry it in our gas dryer (seen at the very end of the video) before storing it.


We are glad to be done with harvest in time to enjoy some of this wonderful weather.

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