Hmmmmm, 3 weeks

It has been 3 weeks since I last blogged and I was really going to make an effort to get one a day this month, so much for that. In about 6 weeks, it will be a year that I started the Photo a Day challenge. Hmmm, that didn't work out so well either. This is the reason I don't belong to Facebook or Twitter, I have too much technology in my life now that I don't manage well. I don't need anymore despite the urging of some friends.

It is only 2 days before Thanksgiving and we are still picking corn!!!! It is not going to be done before then either as it will not dry down.

I did ride in the combine several weeks ago with my husband and took some photos of the inside of the cab. The technology that is inside the cab is amazing to me. When I grew up, combines didn't even have cabs. If they were lucky, they had an umbrella over their heads during wheat harvest and there certainly wasn't a heater in the fall and winter.

The orange joy stick is what he uses to run any number of things, i.e. as the unloading auger. He will pre-set some operations so that he just pushes a button and it will automatically go back to the pre-set postion.

There are monitors around that constantly put out all kinds of information pretaining to how the combine is operating and grain being harvested. One screen is telling him the number of bushels being harvested, the moisture of the corn, what it is making per acre, and lots more info that has been saved from other operations during the year.

This is one of the monitors and it is showing the number of bushels being harvested and charting it in colors. He sets it to record at certain levels. Each color represents a number of bushels. Such as 190-200, 200 to 210, etc. The trick to making this work is fine tuning, in a word, accurate calibration. Everything is recoreded on to a flash card and he will be able to bring it in after harvest and print off whatever information he wants.

We have used two grain carts this year as this combine picks corn much faster than our older one did and it is not good to have the combine sitting in the field waiting on a grain cart. It has also been very muddy and part of the time they have not been able to load the carts to capacity.