Harvest

It's a gorgeous day, mild and mid to upper 60's – but with rain in the forecast for the next three days, the farm trucks are very busy today hauling in this year's harvest.

I grew up here in “the middle”, and I forget sometimes that people in other parts of the country don't understand our planting and harvesting lifestyle. The main crops grown in this part of the state are field corn and soybeans. Because of a cold, late spring – including a rare early May snowstorm – planting was late this year. So, naturally, harvest is running behind. I know the farmers have been very happy with this warm, long fall.

I've seen the corn harvest start as soon as early August......this year harvest didn't start until September. Once harvest starts, farmers are almost married to their combines. As soon as the dew dries up in the morning, the harvest starts. Most bigger farmers have semis to haul their harvest to town, with hired drivers. As soon as the semi trailer is filled, the parade to the grain elevator starts. We have two elevators not far from our house, and the route many trucks take is the intersection out our back door.

As long as the equipment works properly, most combines will run all day and up until dark......in crunch time, the combines are equipped with lights in case you need to keep harvesting because rain is coming in. Often the last load of the evening will be loaded into the semi and covered with a tarp, to be delivered the next morning before the next day's harvesting begins.

Planting is a juggling game, making sure the corn gets planted and then the soybeans, so the corn harvest ends by the time the soybeans are ready to come out of the ground. The crops are rotated, so that a field that grows corn this year will likely be planted in soybeans next year. The farmers will finish up the corn harvest and just take the time to remove the corn head from the combine and put on the bean head. In the “good old days”, there were two separate pieces of equipment for harvesting. It's so much handier to be able to use the basic combine with interchangeable harvest heads.

When I was growing up, we didn't normally plant row crops. Our farm was very hilly......to say nothing of rocky!.....with a lot of timber. I do remember the summer I was five Dad planted the field east of the house in field corn. It wasn't to sell, it was to have for cattle feed over the next winter.

Our neighbor came over on Thanksgiving Day, driving his tractor with the corn picker attached, and harvested the corn for Dad. Unlike today's combine corn heads, this corn picker harvested the entire cob of corn (instead of the individual kernels). We had a corn crib section in our barn and the ears of corn were shoveled into the crib for storage.

Even though I was young, I have memories of working to get the dried corn kernels off the cob to be fed to the cows. It wasn't difficult getting them off, but it was done by hand. Dad would get the cob started for me by getting the first few kernels off, then I would rub the heel of my hand over the kernels and they would pop out of the cob and into my bucket. Like any hard work, I remember the heel of my hand getting sore.

I remember feeling like I was really helping. I was, though, pretty happy that Dad didn't plant corn after that!