Showing posts with label harvest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label harvest. Show all posts

Thursday, November 14, 2013

A Wall of Bright

 Both sets of eye watched the march of the corn plants to certain doom -- hypnotic, plant after plant, the wind picked up, and blew across the tops of the stalks in a wave, hit the side of the combine and blew the piled up chaff into a swirling cloud; that converged with the sun, at ten in the morning, with not a cloud in the sky, into a massive wall of light to one side and in front of the combine.  Lucky slowed a bit, poor visibility, a strong gust hit, snapped the tops off from just above the ear; roared through the mirrors, antennas, cameras, and other dangles; and blew the amorphous wall of bright away.  Vogt snapped out of it and " do you have the latest survey maps of the subsidence".  blurted out, with out a check.  Lucky slowed even more,"thought I had the latest, but I don't have any survey marks". Just as he said it an external thought germinated, just breaking the through the surface realty, "just watch it kid": It was his neural I.D., so he was not being hacked into, not that such a thing had ever been done.  Was it even possible?  Just watch it kid?  Watch what?  Then it clicked, a bulb went on, a light came from within and illuminated this particular situation, and a thought formed of his own will: this guy is not a soil scientist and I do know him.  Then  the unsettling: the other Lucky faintly chimed in "you got it, now follow the breadcrumbs" 








Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Do Not Hand Feed the Reaper.

  "I have always been a soil scientist".  Expecting more in the way of a reply, Lucky settled in the chair, closed the standing well, looked out past Vogt to the trickle of grain coming out of the auger arm, shut down the P.T.O.(power take off) that stopped the auger, fold | ramp two thousand R.P.M, the massive electric motor made a few octave changes, flipped the safety switch that started the head,feeder,separator,thresher,knives,and other auxiliary reaping armaments; pushed the stick gently forward and started cutting.  Stalks twitched, violently slurped into the head, gnawing them down, chewing them up, and in a chronic explosive defecation event, ejected out the back.  Lucky concentrated on keeping the speed just right, the distance between the ground and the head was regulated by sensor, but only roughly, debris interference occurred.  Vogt look past Lucky into the unharvested field, map overlay on: a red outline with short regularly placed perpendicularly lines appeared about fifty yard to the left and forward,  it looked like he would be riding for a while.




Thursday, November 7, 2013

Time Trials with Mass and Momentum.

L.J., standing in the cab of the auger wagon, tunes thumping out the dust, going over the commodity report, taking a sip of tea, when the auto drive was triggered by the harvester and the wagon took off like a jerk.  Auto wagon suspend, and he took over the wheel, slowed down, put the cup in a holder, snapped shut the lid, wiped off his face with the bottom of his shirt and made a wide ark, angling in with the rows, positioning the wagon exactly underneath where the harvesters unfolding auger arm would soon be, auto wagon engage. When both the wagon and the harvester synced speed, the harvester's auger started up with a high raspy sound, multitudes of kernels being forced through the arm by the rotating auger.  Splat, just like a giant bean bag had been pitched into the wagon, made the whole rig whence, and dance a jig till it was too full, and had to sit down for the night.  L.J. turned the cab about ten minutes to right to take a look at dusty gold being barfed out of that tube. Wait for.. last trickle, auto wagon suspend, and take off like a yak out of hell.  Fly down the row at twenty M.P.H. with around forty tons of grain in the back.  At the end, slow, make the turn, hop and bounce until lined up with the end row.