Sunday, October 7, 2007

Harvest Time - Iowa Tractor Boys

A Young Iowa Tractor Boy with His Son in the Combine as they are harvesting Corn. Iowa Gold!!!!!!!!! A recent Post to this Blog discussed the potato harvest and how Iowa Tractor Boys grew their own produce. This image shows a combine with the corn header ready to harvest corn. This crop is used to feed livestock which produces our beef, our pork, our poultry, and our mutton. Additionally, corn is used in the production of cereal. Of course, corn from the United States of America is exported around our World. Additionally, corn and other grains are now being used to produce energy.
Here the hopper is being emptied to a grain wagon for transport to the holding bin and drying. Some Farmers ship their corn directly to a grain elevator for appropriate drying and future shipment to grain processing facilities or export.

The two pictures above display the wagon unloading operation to a holding bin for additionally processing at the onsite grain dryer. A few years ago, the composer of this post was complaining about the high cost of natural gas to heat his Georgia Home. His sibling Brother quickly informed him that the cost of natural gas to dry his corn crop had doubled in the past year, from $17,000.00 to $34,000.00. So much for complaining about a few hundred dollars to keep warm all Winter in Georgia. Additionally, I was informed that a tune-up and appropriate repair conducted on the corn combine for readiness for the harvest was a mere $17,000.00. So much for the high cost of keeping my pick-up truck in peek operating conditioning. It is amazing what the Iowa Tractor Boys must expend to produce our food material.