Harvest Is In Full Swing

      The farmers took advantage of great weather yesterday.  They have just recently been able to get back in the fields because of all the rain we've had.
       Country Guy asked me to run out to the elevator and take some pictures since he had heard they had a record number of trucks waiting in line and he was in combining corn so wasn't able to get there to see it.  I thought you might be interested to see what harvest in full swing looks like at a grain elevator.  (FYI:  On an Apple computer you can enlarge a photo, or page, by holding down the 'Command' and 'Shift' keys and typing '+' several times. I would assume there is a similar feature on Windows computers.)

     For those of you unfamiliar with the process, these large trucks have doors on the bottom of their trailors that are opened over the pit (see white truck above).  Each door is opened in succession with the truck moving forward to empty one section at a time until the whole truck is empty.  

     The grain falls into the pit where augers move it underground to the elevator leg (the tower visible in the first photo) which takes the grain to the top of the silos where it is directed to the right tank and emptied into it. 

       I have been hearing of record yields for some farmers with the corn crop averaging near 200 bushels per acre.  Of course, as is always the case when harvest is good, the price of grain has gone down significantly, particularly corn, which is under $3/bushel right now.  Several months ago it was over $7/bushel.