Dust coming out of the top of the silo as the first load of corn is blown in.
It's been another busy week here on the farm. We started combining corn. We have about 300 acres to combine before we are finished.
Combining is harvesting just the corn from the plant. The plant material is chopped up and left in the field and will be plowed back into the field before planting in the spring.
The corn is unloaded from the bin in the combine into a dump cart or our big red dump truck. The combine has a long arm on it with an auger that unloads the corn into the truck.
The truck has a hydraulic lift and is backed up and tipped up to unload the corn onto a conveyor belt that runs into the blower that blows the corn up and into the silo.
The Big Green Eating Machine is just getting started. It will be going at it for weeks before we are done. We expect to fill two and a half 20 feet in diameter by 80 feet high silos.
Dusty bees wings.
I spent 45 minutes yesterday trying to deliver food to the various fields. At one point we had Son #2 combining corn, Farmer was merging hay, Son #4 was chopping hay, Son #3 and 3 others were hauling hay. I bumped through corn fields and roamed up and down hills in the hay field before delivering all the goods.
I took a break after that and met my girlfriend for coffee. I usually have the dirtiest car in the parking lot wherever I go. While sitting outside enjoying our drinks I noticed that my car is not only the dirtiest car in the parking lot, it has the great distinction of having cornstalks sticking out from underneath. So, I can say I'm pretty sure my car stands alone in the cornstalk category in the Panera Bread parking lot.
Tonight things will be shutting down early. Two sons with their wives and Farmer and I are heading to our church for a marriage conference which comes at a great time considering the girls and I haven't seen our guys not covered in dust and dirt or outside of a green machine for way too long. It will be nice sitting beside them in clean clothes and smelling good.
