Corn harvest started tonight

16 years ago

Farmer Dan started to pick corn tonight. I heard the sound of the picker and ran out onto the back porch quick to take a video. He'll be out there way past dark and by morning most if not all of the field will be done.

Here is a link that might be useful: Picking corn

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Comments (20)

socks
16 years ago
Interesting. How does that thing work?

Susan (city girl)
schoolhouse_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
As he drives forward, the front of the machine takes in the cornstalks, the ears of corn are removed from the stalks, then the kernels of corn are separated from the corn cobs. The kernels go into one holding tank, the ground up corn cobs and corn stalks fly out the back of the machine. When the tank is full, the farmer waits for or drives up to a big truck and then the corn is discharged down a long "pipe" and into the bed of the truck. When the truck bed is full, it high-tails it back to the farm to unload it and get back to the cornfield before the corn picker is full again.
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susanjf_gw
16 years ago
schoolhouse where are you? don't blame him for starting now if you're anywhere in the mid west with yukky weather tomorrow...
susie53_gw
16 years ago
Most all of our Farmer Dans are finished here in Indiana. Several years ago we moved my inlaws to town and it was a blessing to dad that there was a farmer's field across the road. He would sit out and watch him work away. He had been a farmer all his life...
glenda_al
16 years ago
Just curious, cause I don't know.

Is this corn then used for pigs feed??

As well as popcorn?

I really do not know.
schoolhouse_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
I'm in Wayne County Ohio. Last year he didn't harvest until December; didn't think he'd ever get around to it.

glenda, some of the corn probably will end up as feed but the majority of corn planted now days by farmers ends up being processed into High Fructose Corn Syrup. And you know that stuff is in everything, so corn is profitable; but I've heard that a side effect of this is that corn grown now is a poor variety, with not much nutritional value for animals.

Although grown in the same manner, popcorn is a different type of corn with smaller, tighter kernels. Sorry I don't know the scientific name for it. What Dan is picking tonight is what we always called "field corn". Oh, and I'm not a farmer nor did I grow up on a farm, just been surrounded by them all my life.
iowagirl2006
16 years ago
Your info on the corn being of less nutritional value is incorrect. Also - the majority does NOT go to HFCS. More than half to three quarters will be animal feed. Some is exported, some is used in ethanol production, corn oil, and HFCS.

The byproduct of corn ethanol is used as a high protein cattle feed - so it gets used twice!

Most of the corn grown is #2 corn - field corn.

We harvest some of our corn as silage - the entire plant is chopped when it is still green - stalk, leaves and ears. It is tightly packed in a bunker or blown up into a tall concrete silo. It ensiles - or ferments. That is mixed with cracked corn, ground hay, and protein pellets to make a ration for the cattle.

We have about 1 day left of harvest - and the weather sounds awful for tomorrow.

We started in early September and have been going full time ever since. Only a couple days off in that whole time. Weather has been great and yields have been fairly good.

We also grow soybeans.

That was a very nice video schoolhouse! Looks very familiar to me right now. We run an 8 row machine - it travels thought the field at about 6 mph. We can turn on the auto guidance system and it will steer itself though the field (we turn at the ends though). We can download a detailed yield map at the end of the day from the GPS system.

Very high tech!
jemdandy
16 years ago
This is "field corn" and will not end up as pop-corn, although it will pop. Most pop-corn comes from corns bred specifically for pop-corn. This field corn will go to cereals, food stock, grain alcohol, animal and poultry feed, and bird food. Some will be processed for cooking oil. Much of the alcohol will end up in the fuel tank in your car. Corn is also used to make alcoholic beverages, vodka and whiskey for examples.
Marilyn Sue
16 years ago
The corn and soy beans have been out of the fields around here for a good while. Even though it has been dry, I think the crops did fairly well. The combines can sure stir up a lot of dust.

Sue in central Indiana
tralynn
16 years ago
Our corn harvest here in western ny, is about done. Everyone has been going full force for about a month now. The weather has been pretty good. I work at a feed mill and some of the farmers have been hauling their corn in here. We use several ton a day to make cow feed, poultry feed, hog feed and horse feed. My dh and I used to dairy farm, and we always enjoyed the fall harvest.
schoolhouse_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
iowagirl, thanks for the additional info - good to know! I was concerned when I read about the HFCS production. Another scare tactic by some group of people??

I love the smell of silage. An 8-row machine? Wow. How many acres of corn to you put in? Sounds like everyone is having a good corn harvest this Fall. Give thanks to our farmers!
bigfoot_liz
16 years ago
actually this yrs corn and soybean crops have been called serious failures according to the futures market. consumers were warned a couple of weeks ago about price hikes to pretty much everything LOL what else is new. just a side note, cotton crop problems were announced this past summer, with a warning about steep price hikes 20-30%. there is enough supply in the pipeline to get thru dec but then prices go up and there will be few all cotton products made because of the shortage. there is a severe insect problem, a weevil i think, in the US this yr.

guess those ethanol users are learning the pit falls of being dependent on growing a living crop especially one that monsanto basically controls :-) ~ liz
iowagirl2006
16 years ago
Grain prices are good right now - from my perspective - that is AWESOME! The high yields predicted in many areas did not pan out. They never get it right - playing the commodities market is a scary thing.

They are starting to explore other methods of producing ethanol - including using stover (the left over corn plant after the ear has been picked) switchgrass, and other products.

We plant about 1000 acres of corn. We harvest a few hundred acres for cattle feed and the rest is grain that we sell. We don't have as many soybean acres. Also have grass and pasture for cattle.
schoolhouse_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
That's alot of corn, iowa. Dan didn't get the picking done last night, he's out there right now finishing up. I notice the stubble is taller than usual, what would that indicate if anything? Just an observation.

Well, off to the grocery for some cornmeal to make muffins to go with my bean soup. How fitting!
iowagirl2006
16 years ago
He may have his header height up for a variety of reasons. Hard to say why. We had to slow the head down in a couple of fields because the corn was shelling - so those fields look a little rougher.

Muffins and bean soup sound YUMMY!
jannie
16 years ago
Very interesting. When I was in college, I went with friends for a drive. We pulled up to a cornfield and decided to help ourselves. But when we got back and boiled it, it tasted awful! It was cow corn, not people corn (sweet corn). Taught us a lesson!
schoolhouse_gw
Original Author
16 years ago
My Mom tells the story of when she and Dad were first married, they went into a corn field to steal corn. Dad was so scared, he "froze" and couldn't move or speak for awhile. Mom says to this day she was sure he had a slight heart attack!
susanjf_gw
16 years ago
a lot of the corn grown in sw mi is for seed corn, or so my sis would tell me...
chisue
16 years ago
Can any of the farmers here tell me why we had so little good sweet corn this year? Same story with green beans.

I'm near Chicago.

When I saw this thread I thought about my mother's tales of helping to hand pick corn as a little girl -- they hoped to have enough to feed the family cow and pig! No mechanical anything in on that tiny farm in 1910. I have a picture of my mother with the butter churn, kerosene lamp in the background.
jemdandy
16 years ago
To Jannie: The corn you eat off the cob or prepare by cutting off the cob for corn dishes can be the same field corn you see in fall harvests, but it is "sweet corn", not mature corn. Corn for eating is inmature corn taken just after the kernels have almost filled the cob. Sometimes, it is taken before the cob has filled and the kernels are undersized. At this stage, the corn is still sweet (filled with simple sugars). Later in the season as the corn matures, the sugars convert to starch and the kernels harden. Sweet corn for the table is in season in early summer.

Truck farmers who specialize in sweet corn plant a variey bred specifically for table use.

Mature hard corn can be ground to the consistancy of coarse flour and used to make cornbread,

Corn harvest started tonight

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Corn harvest started tonight

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