So nearly daily rainfall with cold and cloudy conditions, there was virtually no harvest the past two weeks. But on Wednesday the sun came out and it dried up enough to resume corn plot harvest. Here is the harvest crew on Farm 7. That's Tim in the cart, Ron driving the tractor and Jeff at the combine controls.
So I climbed up and rode a few rounds with Jeff and watched the massive 4-row corn head devour corn. Well it works for us, to harvest the middle four rows of our six row plots. Every year I am grateful when we finish harvest without a breakdown as I think it would be difficult to find a four row head these days. Although I think the people who actually do the harvest work would like to have a newer and bigger one. Well you just don't rush into such a drastic change.
It was a nice day, but cold. There were still several experiments to harvest, but they worked late and finished up Farm 7. Good thing because early on Thursday it started to rain again and continued through Thursday with light snow Thursday night.
Once again here is a picture of Tim taking samples for determine test weight and moisture. This grain cart has a scale for measuring plot production. The weight from each plot is entered on an iPad and automatically sent to the data network.
Meanwhile back at the NCRS office....Renae takes the samples that Tim collected and runs them through our Dickey John grain tester for test weight and moisture. She enters those numbers on another iPad, and somehow it all gets merged, sorted and averaged.
It's come a long way since the sliding balance for test weight, a portable moisture tester, and catching the corn in bags and weighing them later. Good thing, as modern and accurate research is the norm at the NCRS for it's 24th crop harvest. Where does the time go? But they did finish plot harvest today. Now to decipher the numbers and see what happened.
