Harvesting Corn — From Beginning to End

When field corn (as opposed to sweet corn or ensilage corn) is dry and ready for harvest it looks like this.  The moisture in the corn needs to drop, meaning leave the cob, the stalks and leaves to a proper level so it won’t mold.  We harvest (pick) corn around a 12 or 14.  It’s 12 in this photo.

This is a deer run.  You can see how they beat a path through the rows.  They even make beds inside the corn, which show up on Google earth like circles.

This is the corn combine. We have another one to combine beans.  Our equipment is old by most farmers’ standards, but it works for us and it’s paid for.  We joke because DH has several combines, five to be exact, but two of them are for parts.  When you have old equipment you need to have parts for when they break down…we live too far away from Tractor Salvage yards so we keep a small herd for repairs. 

You can see the combine moving down the field.  This combine takes four rows at a time.

This is a better view.  Beacause of how DH plants the rows a four-row header works the best for us.

The combine strips all the corn off the cob and spits it out

And leaves the field looking like this!  Later on in the year (the hay has to be totally dead or it will bloat the cows) we will turn the cows out to run the whole 80 acres.  They love these cobs and stalks and the corn that gets spilled.  It’s a favorite food to them.

The combine stores the corn until the HOPPER is full.  Then DH dumps the corn into the back of our truck.  I call this liquid gold.

We take all our corn to the Delta Elevator, but other people have contracts with Foster Farms.

Delta Elevator also sells some of our hay for us.  We have customers that come to the farm, but the Elevator also contracts with us. 

Here the corn is turned into feed for all types of corn eating animals.

Each load is weighed in before unloading.  After unloading the truck is weighed again.  This is how the farmer is paid.  I’m not sure what the price is this year, it’s down from the last couple of years. 

I would have gone in to take pictures of the corn sliding into the shoot, but they didn’t want me in there….something about safety.    

And it starts all over again until the field is completely done for another year.