Annual Corn Harvest Photos, 2012

Every year, during corn harvest, I like to take photos of the boys in the field, and today was the day to grab some shots before the choppers finish up and move on to the next farm.

 

 

The ears on our corn are very big this year, many of them are 10-12" long!

 

While we were there, the chopper came by - look out!

 

 

I love this photo, and am so proud that our little guys already have a love for agriculture!

 

 

 

"Cheeese!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the corn looks like after it's been chopped. Ear, stalk and all. It gets packed onto a concrete storage area known as the "pit", where it is covered with heavy plastic to ferment into silage, and then fed as an ingredient in our mixed feed rations.

 

 

Springtime Harvesting

Chopping season has arrived... well, almost. Today the first choppers of the year moved in, to chop our alfalfa for silage. 

The boys love to watch equipment work the field next to our house.

The task today was to pick-up the feed that had been laid in windrows by the swather, and sun dried for the past 2 days.

The trucks haul the chopped feed to a concrete storage area on our farm, where The Silage Bagger is waiting.

The bagger is a mechanized contraption that funnels the feed into these tube style storage bags. The feed, typically oats, corn, or as in this case - alfalfa, goes into the bag, where it ferments for a period of time until it is ready to be used as a feedstuff for our herd known as Silage. The most common question we are asked about these white bags is "Is that your manure storage?"  Nope, that's our feed storage!  

The truck backs up to this conveyor, opens the rear doors and unloads the feed, called green chop, onto the belt.

The bagger operator, standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, monitors the belt as it feeds the green chop up into the funnel.

As the belt runs over the top of the bagger, the green chop is pressed through the funnel into the silage bag. As the bag fills, the bagger rolls slightly forward to allow for more green chop to fill in. 

This is a view of the back of the truck, unloading onto the conveyor belt.

Our lucky little farmers got to stand at the controls today, and see just how the green chop gets packed!

This fall, when we chop our corn fields, the silage bags will be much larger, and require the use of a pit packer tractor instead of the bagger.

Annual Corn Harvest Photos

Our annual corn harvest photos... the corn seems to be getting shorter... oh, maybe it's just Clayton getting taller!

The Kid and the Corn

We made it home one evening just in time to grab some pictures of Clayton before the corn came down.
The next morning, he wanted to stay to watch the choppers instead of going to day care.

The Kids and the Corn

Tomorrow, the corn will come down and we'll once again have a view of the dairy from our yard! This is the first annual "Clayton and the Corn" photo.

Abby and Emily posed, too!