As I set out on the road and began writing Into The West I was digesting the story of Chris McCandless, the young man who starved to death in the swamps near Denali sixteen years ago. The story deeply affected me. I saw the Into The Wild, promptly went out to get the book by Jon Krakauer on which the movie is based, and with a tiny nudge from a fellow Kossack I placed the sound track on my iPod. Oh, and I made excuses, got up, and got out the door.
I'm not retracing his steps, but my path may cross his before this journey is over; I've already been to the place of his terminus, wandering the slopes of Denali six years after his death. I'm not following in his footsteps; I've clearly stated I'll no longer conceal my wandering temperament, he and I share to some degree tastes and world views, but my final resting place on this journey will be a snug New England house laying next to the Kossack I love best.
McCandless worked the high plains wheat harvest and I've fallen into a similar opportunity; I've found the most marvelous modern art masterpiece of a combine and I spent the cloudy Iowa afternoon running down three hundred bushels of corn and helping to prep the crop's drying and storage facilities.
I came to Iowa to make the bits fly on the internet access system that covers a good portion of this county. The engineer in residence is a part time contractor – he has a square mile of Iowa farmland under his care as well as the internet service for many thousands of his neighbors. We'd talked just a bit about my recent travels and he knew I was keen to get behind the controls of a combine, so he saved this year's half a square mile of corn for me.
First, let's check out the mechanical marvel I've been piloting. This machine began life as a Case International 1440 Axial Flow but it's been, uhh, modified.
This is a jarring image to natives of the region. How does a bright red machine get the green nose of a competitor's system?
The answer is simple and sensible, like most things in Iowa. The red head that belongs on there is a rather fragile piece. This combine was bought for around $70,000 with five years of service on it but all of the corn heads meant for it were found to be often welded and they had a reputation for misbehavior. The John Deere unit is a stone solid collector of field corn so a local blacksmith was engaged to fit it to the International.
The more seed corn companies fiddle with corn genetics the harder the stalks get. There are spring loaded steel skids under there, an add on that protect the tires by flattening the two rows of stubble ahead of the tires.
The upper two rotating stalk spreaders are factory and the one below is an aftermarket addition.
Farmers today go after corn like a commercial jet pilot on final approach. The GPS connected computer remembers what was planted where and a simple procedure allows the marking of rocks to be removed or field tile to be repaired, and the sensors constantly report yield and moisture content.
The combine itself holds about one hundred sixty bushels in this bin.
The smaller truck will hold exactly two combines full or three hundred twenty bushels and the larger one holds three hundred eighty. One truck is left in the field to be filled while the other is driven back and unloaded. Two men who are good at this mesh neatly, transporting truckloads of grain, and swapping roles occasionally so the combine driver doesn't get cramped. I'm a bit handicapped in this regard – the trucks are both very cantankerous and maneuvering hilly roads with a nine ton payload and sketchy brakes is a skill that takes much longer to develop than those required to pilot the combine.
The harvested corn is unloaded into this bin complex. The first stop is the holding bin on the left, 24' across, 20' high, and capable of holding 5,000 bushels.
This bin is used for basic air drying of the corn. It's pressurized a bit from below and a "stirculator" moves the drier corn from the bottom to the stop. We had to get up in the bin and fiddle with it today as the drive cable and slipped.
I'm in it up to my waist and I could wriggle no further. Consistency wise corn feels a bit like a heavy, lose sort of sand. You sink in no deeper than your ankles unless you're purposefully horsing around like I was here.
The corn comes from the field at roughly 19% moisture. The preliminary air drying knocks that down a bit but this propane fueled dryer can bring it down to the 14% number required for the best price when selling it. The cone shaped space up there can take seven hundred bushels (two truckloads) with the dryer blowing hot air in and the gates periodically opening when moisture levels have dropped to an acceptable level. Annual propane use for the roughly 55,000 bushels produced on the farm would be about three thousand gallons.
There are bins at another location on the farm but this is the main one with 41,000 bushels of total capacity. Corn processing begins in the air dried storage bin, it proceeds to the bin with the dryer, and once it is complete it is moved to one of three other bins via a portable screw auger. The large bin at the front left is used for grain that is brought in late in the harvest season when it has already air dried down to the 14% - 16% range. This bin's placement makes it impossible to auger grain from the drying bin to it, even though they're next to each other
(CODA: most of this was written last night. Today we went out, I watched for a bit, then I combined about 3,000 bushels on my own. Everything was great ... until the last load. I was coming back in, combing as I went, and I was nearly full - 160 bushels or just short of five tons of corn were on board. I hit a hidden ditch in the field, pitched forward and tipped sideways, spilled a couple of hundred pounds, and managed to pop the corn head partially off its mounts and bury it in the dirt. I extracted the combine from the ditch with the corn head in tow but obviously misaligned. When I got back to the driveway the owner just laughed - this is apparently a very common occurrence and it took him less than three minutes to realign the head and reattach one of the drive shafts.)