Chapter 29 - Harvest Time

The skies looked like lead.

It certainly felt like mid-October.  Cool, bordering on cold temperatures penetrated my Pioneer wind breaker and through the Bucky sweatshirt I chose for my first long day on the combine.

The wind was out of the northwest, sweeping across the corn and blowing dirt and dust into whirling eddies of color.

Scotty had been picking corn the past three days and needed a day to attend to farm business.

Since our trip to the Expo, he had talked to family, friends, and the local U.W. extension agent to learn all there was to know about automated dairy operations.  The closest place to our farm was a good three hour drive from here, so that will have to wait until winter when we can plan a trip around scheduled milkings.

I had to admit, that as uncomfortable as I am with technology taking over one of the most fundamentally hands-on jobs on a farm; it could make a lot of sense if the equipment works and the cows come to trust it.

The more I thought about it, I realized the machine I was driving was a perfect example of how we adopt technology and then adapt it what we need it do.

My grandfather worked a lot harder than I do to harvest a lot less corn in the same amount of time.
 

By guiding the massive machine across the field, I'm able to harvest 12 rows of corn with every trip.  It may seem like slow motion from behind the wheel, but it took Grandpa a week to do the same amount of work.

When it comes to adopting and adapting; even the crop itself is doing that.

Corn is feed for cattle.  It can be turned into sweetener, plastic, and even used in creating cleaner burning fuel.

The essence of farming hasn't changed - it's still a job to grow the food that keeps food on the table for much of the United States and the world.

I pulled the combine off on to the pasture after my first complete pass around the field.  Rich pulled up with my tractor and the wagon to haul corn back to our crib.

The dust billows into the air as the corn is augured out of the holding bin in the combine through a pipe and deposited into the wagon.

I open my lunch box revealing ham and cheese on fresh home made bread.  I take a bite out of a sweet pickle and open an ice cold bottle of Mountain Dew.

The corn and I finish about the same time.  I put the wrapper back in the box, the Dew into the bottle holder (something I don't have on my '58 tractor), adjust my Packer hat and head back to the field.

It's October, it's time to bring in the grain.

Catch up on the whole series here.