By Ina, Golden Waves WIFE

A combine is a machine that cuts and thrashes grain. (Thrash and thresh are words that mean the same thing.) Combines are very expensive machines. Most farmers who plant very many acres of grain crops have their own combine but custom harvesters can also be hired to cut the crops. Each combine has a "header" that can be removed when the combine is being moved. Different headers are used for different crops.

This combine has a "corn-head" attached to the front. With each trip through the field, this combine will pick and thrash eight rows of corn, planted in rows 30 inches apart. The combine has a grain tank for holding the thrashed grain. When that tank is full, it must be dumped (unloaded) before the combine can go back to thrashing. The combine operator is unloading the grain tank into a waiting truck, which will carry the corn to a storage facility.

To thrash is to separate the corn kernels from the cob. These ears of corn were gathered for a field test to examine the quality of the corn. When the corn is ready to be harvested, the green leaves covering the corn cob become very dry, whitish in color, and almost paper-like. These cornhusks are stripped from the corncobs by the combine.

This is what a cornfield looks like from inside the cab of a combine. This was a fifty-acre field. It was one-half mile long and yielded almost 8,000 bushels of thrashed corn for cattle feed. By corn yields, this was not spectacular but the rancher was very pleased because it had been a dry year. This was an irrigated cornfield.

Grain trucks are used to transport the thrashed corn from the fields to grain elevators or other storage facilities. When the yield is good, one combine will keep 2 or 3 trucks busy hauling the corn. This truck holds about 350 bushels of corn when it is full.

Almost full! This truck will hold 625 bushels of corn when it is full. It has eight wheels under the bed of the truck and is used to haul grain and silage. When the truck is full, the driver will drive very slowly. The rancher doesn't want any of the grain to spill or be blown out of the truck. He needs all of the corn for his cattle.

A grain cart is pulled by a tractor. Using a tractor and grain cart makes the harvesting
go much faster. The combine never has to stop cutting to unload the grain. The tractor will drive up beside the combine and position the grain cart under the combine's unloading spout. The combine will unload the grain into the grain cart as the combine and tractor move side by side thru the field. The tractor will pull the grain cart to the grain truck, which is usually waiting beside the field, and unload the grain into that truck. It requires good driving and machine operating skills to drive the combine and tractor side by side and unload grain at the same time without spilling any of the grain or running into each other.

Corn to be used as grain for cattle feed is hauled to these silos, called "Harvestores", for storage. The truck driver backs the truck up to a "hopper" and raises the truck bed.

The end-gate on the truck box is opened so that the grain is gradually dumped into the hopper. From the hopper, the grain is augered (moved by a upward spiral motion) into the blower (the red machine). The blower whirls the grain very fast inside a "grain tub" and "blows" the grain 85 feet up through the silver-colored pipe coming out of the top right-hand side of the blower. At the top of the pipe, the grain drops down into the blue silo for storage. When the doors on the tops of these airtight silos are closed, the grain will keep for a long time without spoiling.

The orange-colored tractor is the "power unit" for the blower. It runs at a high speed to spin the power take-off that is hooked to the blower. This is what powers the blower. The power take-off is very dangerous and must be watched very carefully without getting too close to it.

This combine is thrashing milo or grain sorghum. This grain is also used for livestock feed. There is a lot of dust when milo is harvested. The combine operator is always glad to have a cab with a filtered air supply when it's time to harvest milo (and a nice hot shower at the end of the day). Under a microscope, milo dust particles resemble tiny, tiny cockleburs or Velcro spikes. Just taking pictures of milo harvest can make you very itchy!

When anything on a machine breaks, it must be fixed so harvest can continue. This man is in the back of his service pickup working on a machine part. Remember what you read about milo dust? When this picture was taken, the combine operator was actually up inside the back of the combine cleaning out the sieves (sort of like big spaghetti strainers). The sieves are kept clean so that the grain itself is cleaner and has fewer pieces of stalks or weeds mixed in with the grain. It's a dirty dusty itchy job but it has to be done.

This combine is cutting soybeans. Soybeans are used for human food, livestock feed, and many other things such as ink, crayons, and candles. This combine is the same machine that was used to harvest corn. For soybeans, it has a "grain head" attached in place of the "corn head".