John's job at harvest is to drive the combine through the corn.
Even after Americans knew how to build atomic bombs that could obliterate an entire city, it took a while to make a machine that could pick corn and shell it in one pass. Until 1954, corn was picked in the ear, hauled into the yard and then removed from the cob in a separate operation.
Picking and shelling photos courtesy of the Internet.
The invention of combines, which could both pick and shell grain in the field, resulted in a remarkable increase in productivity - corn that took an entire day to shuck and shell in 1900 could, by the end of the century, be picked, shucked, and shelled with a combine in five minutes.
My job is to drive the grain cart alongside the combine. When John's combine bin gets full, he dumps his corn into the grain cart.
My dad took this photo last year, of the combine unloading into the grain cart. Having a grain cart saves John lots of time - instead of driving to the field edge to empty the combine every time it's full, he keeps picking while I drive alongside, receiving the corn.
A lot can go wrong when you're driving the grain cart. To avoid dumping corn either on the ground or the cab of the tractor, you have to be the right distance away from the combine, and you have to go the same speed as your combine driver. If he slows, you slow. If he speeds up, you'd better not be thinking about what's for supper.
Sometimes I mess up.
Then I get a little aerobic exercise with a shovel in my hand, out in the gorgeous fall sunshine.
6 comments:
A LITTLE exercise?!?!
Understatment of the year....fun post Mom!
Your combine pictures are really neat! I bet it's hard driving the tractor along side the combine. It sure looks tricky.
Brings back good memories. I used to drive the tractor with the wagon for our neighbor. His operation was a bit smaller though - we'd leave empty gravity boxes at the end of the field and he'd unload into those after each pass to the end of the field and back. Then we'd drop off another empty wagon, hitch up to a full one and bring it over to the grain dryer at our farm and unloadit via a big auger into the dryer. Long days and nights in the tractor but quite fulfulling work too.
Ahhh... farm life. Harvest. Although I never did much with corn at First Fruits, this somehow seems a familiar process to me!
It looks like you had a beautiful day to work in!
that is very interesting. I always wondered what a combine was...
David - You knew right where I was going next: "long days and nights in the tractor." Sounds like you've been there.
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