First signs of Fall

Well, folks, I'm going to be among the first to say it:  summer's over.  I know Labor Day is supposed to be the unofficial last day of summer, but when farmers start harvesting corn before Labor Day comes, they kinda sorta beat the holiday to the punch. 

We had the opportunity to work with our neighbors to start chopping their corn silage this past week.  Corn silage is when farmers go into the field with a chopper to harvest the whole stalk of corn instead of just the ear.  The chopper (what you see in the first picture below) cuts the corn stalk as low to the ground as possible, pulls the whole plant into the piece of machinery and then chops it all into fine pieces to be stored for feed later in the year. 



This is the chopper.  The guys have to grease and oil it in between uses to keep it lubricated and running smoothly.  The corn goes in the front, is chopped by a series of knives and blownout the spout into a wagon pulled behind the chopper.




After we dropped Caleb off at school, Sarah Rose and I decided to stop by where the fellas were working to say hi.  They told us that if we waited long enough, we could have coffee time with them and then go for a tractor ride.  Sarah Rose and Baby wasted no time in taking the lawn chair Papa Loren offered them to relax until the brownies that had been packed for coffee time were broken out.



Meanwhile, Joshua continued using a paint brush and an old cooking pot of used engine oil to oil in all the gears and chains.



After a short coffee time break, Sarah Rose got to ride with Daddy in the tractor to the field while I followed in the car.   She thought this was just about the best thing ever because 1) she LOVES her tractor rides, even more than Caleb does I think; and 2) she got to go all by herself without Mommy or Caleb, which she thought was a super special treat!
(It was really cute when I opened the tractor door to get in... Josh and Sarah Rose were singing and dancing along to the radio while they waited for me to make the walk to the tractor from where I parked my car.  You can tell by the grin on Sarah's face that she was having a good time.)



Time to start chopping!  There's a mini corn head on the chopper (looks similar to the corn head on a combine) that takes in the corn stalks.



Then the corn is fed through the rest of the chopper, chopped and blown into the wagon through the tall yellow spout.  From the wagon, it can be stored in either an AgBag or the silo.  Our neighbor was using an AgBag, which you can read more about below.





Every once in a while, the chopper takes a little more than it can handle and it gets plugged up.  So the driver has to get out and work with the jam until the chopper catches up and can suck the stuck corn up. 



Sarah Rose took the job pretty serious.  She would try to tell Josh when the wagon had "nuff" (enough) and he needed to hook up to an empty one.  She doesn't let much get past her! 





In the background of this picture, you can see the area already chopped.  See the stubble that's left?  There's just a few inches of corn stalk left, a sign of a good chopper.  Now the farmer will check his fences to make sure everything's tight and turn his cow herd in here to let them pick up anything that was missed and eat the grass in the grass strips and turn rows.

 I know I have a few new readers since this summer who missed how the chopper and bagger works.  So I have copied and pasted parts of past blogs to explain it.  Even though the following pictures are of hay, just imagine them being about corn... the process is pretty well the same.  And replace any hay words, with corny words :-)

Hooking up.  On the left side of the picture is, of course, the tractor.  Behind the tractor is the silage chopper and behind the silage chopper are the two wagons.  You'll see pictures below of how the wagons are filled.  When the front wagon is filled with chopped hay, the wagons are unhooked, the filled wagon (the front one) is left where its at while the back wagon (the still empty one) is hooked back up to the chopper to be filled again. 

 

The view from inside the tractor looking back. 
(This is the hay head, its replaced with the corn head when we chop corn.)




The silage chopper is centered over the wind row of hay (or corn the corn head is lined up with the corn rows, as the case may be).  The chopper has "teeth" along the bottom to pick the hay up off the ground and a small auger across the top to feed the hay through the machine.  Inside, there are a series of "knives" that chop the hay fine.  After being chopped, the hay is fed through the side, up the chute and blown out the back. 







The chute.  The hay is blown up the cute and into the wagon.  Whoever is operating the tractor/chopper setup also has to direct the chute which way to blow the hay into the wagon.  The object is to get the wagon filled evenly from side to side to make sure you have a good full load.  If the chute just blew the hay straight back, the sides of the wagon wouldn't be filled...just the middle.  So, the chute has to be moved from side to side to make an even load.







The view from the outside.  See the hay being blown into the wagon?  I like this picture because the silo that the hay will end up in is in the background. 







Whoever is driving the tractor looks back more than they he looks forward.  The left side of the picture is actually the front of the tractor where the steering wheel is.  The driver glances forward every now and then to make sure he's going straight, but most of the time he's looking backward to make sure the chopper is centered over the wind row, the chute is aimed like it should be and that everything is running smoothly.  Many a farmer has come in with kinked necks and backs due to this!



 

 


When a wagon gets filled up, its unhooked and left where its at to be picked up by the second tractor working in the field.   This next bit of info is very important for any of you who think you might have a prospective job helping chop hay one day:  the wagon MUST be unhooked on level ground to avoid a runaway load of hay!  The tractor bounced me and thus the camera, so the picture looks like its on a hill.  But trust me, if the person unhooking has seen just ONE runaway wagon, he makes sure that every wagon he parks is level from then on!





Baggin', Baggin, Baggin'....

... keep that bagger baggin'!  Baggin', baggin', baggiiiiiin.....Its feeeeeed!  (Sung to the tune of "Rawhide".)

A few weeks ago, I blogged about mowing, chopping and storing hay in the silo. This post is about another way that haylage (chopped hay) can be stored for an extended period of time, two years if need be.  Its called an AgBag and I'll do my best to explain how it works.

Once the hay is mowed and chopped into the wagons it is brought onto the yard where the AgBag is located.  An AgBag is just that: an agricultural bag made from very durable, weatherproof plastic used for storing feed.  The AgBag is attached to the bagger.

The bagger has a conveyor (the blue thing you see here) that carries the chopped hay from the load out from the wagon up and into a rotor.  The rotor is a rotating mechanism that has "fingers" that pushes the hay out the back of the bagger and into the bag.  The hay gets super compacted and air tight so that spoilage won't occur.



A little closer look at the conveyor.  The black hoses you see are hydraulic hoses that run the hydraulic motor for the conveyor.  The PTO from the tractor runs the rotor.




The bag is hooked onto the bagger where ever the farmer wants the end of his 200 foot bag to be for the next however long it takes to feed all the hay.  Then, the tractor is left in neutral.  As the haylage compacts into the bag and the bag fills up, the tractor is pushed along in front.




This is the cable.  The cable holds the backstop at the end of the bag.  Once there is a certain amount of pressure on the cable, the tractor and bagger inches forward.  The cable mechanism allows the hay to be compacted as much as possible, taking out all the oxygen and starting the fermentation process.  The hay ferments just like in the silo.  When the bag is full, the cable is released and winched back up, the backstop removed, the tail tucked under and all the farmer has to do is wait for those cold, cold snowy Iowa days to start feeding from the bag.




There ya go.  Two hundred (give or take) feet of cow chow. 
(That's about two hundred TONS, by the way!)