We are now in week six of classes at Purdue... Don't quote me on that. It's been exam time, so things tend to run together! I'm also in the process of working on making sure we are ready for an upcoming Dubois County Young Farmer meeting, and some events at school, so things are crazy!
Add to the list of "crazy happenings" that I got engaged a week and a half ago! My fiancee and I have been together since the week before Christmas, freshman year of high school, so December will be five years. Finally putting a ring on your best friend of nearly eight years is exciting, nerve-wracking, and relaxing all in the same... I'll write about that in my upcoming 30 Days of Blogging series that you can watch out for during November! Back to engagement, everyone wants to see the ring, and the adorable to-be bride, so I have pictures! We couldn't be more excited for this next step in our life together! Not to mention, we have two and a half years until the wedding, so no rush to get things done (or something like that, except not really).
While I listen to my friends at school who are home three times a week and weekends talking about harvest and yields, I usually get at least one daily update from my boss. With Purdue being 160 miles from home, it's exciting enough knowing that the boss is in the middle of harvest at home, and yields are looking beautiful! As hog farmers, we aren't exactly upset about these cheap corn prices at all. It makes up for the fact that we were buying $7 and $8 corn for feed in 2012/2013 after the drought left us with.... Well, very little!
Pre-harvest, there were some improvement projects that we did to speed up the grain storing process this year.
Here, we were sitting on separate grain bins with the new cross-auger mounts, trying to get them ready for the auger with large PVC pipe. The augers were put up with a crane truck, and a crew of professionals (I wasn't around to get pictures). We did, however get cross augers put up, so we use the unloading auger below to empty into the drying bin, and it is automatically augered into two smaller grain bins. One we empty into a truck and transfer to a big grain bin that is separate from the majority of them. The other now has an auger that pulls corn from the middle of the bin and transfers it to three neighboring bins. Corn remains in our bins for as long as it takes to need it for feed. More years than not, we use our corn up for feed as the next crop is coming to the bin. Other years there is carryover from the previous year.
Another addition for us this year was a bigger unloading auger. The old one had a full life, and was ready to be put to pasture. Moving from an 8" to a 10" auger diameter is a surprising difference when it comes to unloading trucks! It speeds up the process for sure!
I'm keeping things short today, but this was my text message on the first day of harvest - "First load."
Here's to a good week for you all!
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