The Combine

It's time!!! Time (finally) to start cutting corn. Since everything was late this year, harvest is late, too. We've been waiting (not so patiently) for the corn to dry down enough to cut. We've decided, it's close enough.

This is Ted doing spring cleaning...and I'm completely aware that it isn't spring. He's in there cleaning the windshield. Hey...some body's got to do it!

It's the CLAW!!! Run! Run for your lives!!!

Seriously, this is where you never want to be when a combine is running. This is a corn header. Those big pointy green things go between the rows of corn, and then the teeth between grabs the stalks, cuts them off, and feeds then back to the auger.

The auger feeds it into the combine where the stalk is stripped of its ears. The ear corn gets fed through the combine where thousands of tiny elves pull all of the kernels off of the cob. All of the unusable stuff gets thrown out of the backside of the combine.

Inside the combine are just a few buttons, bells, and whistles.

A panel of lights will tell you what's going on...hopefully. You don't want a lot of these lights to come on. That means something bad has happened.

Time to boot up! Yes, our combine is subjected to software issues, too.

This is the GPS unit. It feeds that computer screen that you just saw. It draws a nice picture of our field and tells us how many bushels are being cut where. It's pretty neat.

Don't laugh at the fire extinguisher! All I'm sayin' is that fields are dry and dusty places. And static electricity is prone to ignite dry dust. Don't ask us how we know this...but that fire extinguisher works.

Some perspective. Don't laugh...I just got back from the gym and I hadn't changed out of my yoga pants.

See ya farmer Ted! He may come home when it rains...or when he gets hungry...