"Ag" Schnozz wrote:
Is Iowa turning to weeds? Nope. A generation ago, a farmer
family could survive on 500 acres. Not anymore. Farms in this
area now average 2000 acres. The true "agribusinessmen"
(farming is a business, not a lifestyle) regularily run 6000
acres. This isn't podunk farming either. We're talking 180
bushel of corn per acre in a drought. 250-280 bushel per acre
in a good year. Imagine this: the largest combine/harvester
available doesn't even hold 600 bushel. It takes an army of
trucks to support just one harvester. And those new harvesters
are FAST! Of course, they also run $300,000 each!
My grandfather used to work on an operation where he walked a plank on the
back of the plow. His job was to knock out clods of dirt that stuck in the
disks. Three or four steam tractors would pull one long plow straight in
one direction until lunch. Then in the afternoon, they would return to
their starting point. I don't imagine they could move as fast as today's
tractors do, but they did have an enormous amount of pulling power.
This next week, I'm going to photograph my jeep next to a wagon
used to transport corn off of the field and to waiting trucks.
It holds something like 4000 bushel. It is huge. The tires are
around 10 feet (3 meters) tall. Takes up two entire lanes of a
road. The unloading chute (powered by the PTO) is almost
two-feet in diameter. It can unload in about 60 seconds.
That's a good thing, since the harvestor will fill it's own 500
bushel bin in three minutes and needs these wagons to be hoofing
it back and forth.
Maybe you can get some shots of the combines working at night. I always
enjoyed watching the combines, three or four wide as they consumed a
field. Our roads on the eastern shore of Maryland had a lane-wide shoulder
of blacktop in each direction for the equipment to run on.
Gregg
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