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Teachers & Students
Inside the cab of the "Uni" you can look down and see the corn stalks being picked up.
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Christopher likes to drive the harvester; he does the work of a man and does it well. He doesn't really like my taking his picture, however.
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Here's a longer view of our harvester in the field pulling the wagon. Actually, Christopher has to turn around to start down another stretch. It's 3:30 p.m. which is about an hour from sundown, but we will keep going until around 8:30 p.m. and unload the wagons with the help of a light. The harvester has good lights for seeing the rows, but you have to watch out for rocks!
We talked about the "munching" noise it makes as the corn stalks go through. Can you imagine what it sounds like when it picks up a rock? Rocks can do a lot of damage to the harvester. We have to stop quickly and get the rock out before it goes far in the machine.
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Here you can see the popcorn cobs spitting into the wagon from the harvester. You have to look back from the cab to see how your wagon is filling. You don't want to overfill the wagon. An overfull load is dangerous, and why pick the corn if you are going to spill it?
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When the wagon is full, it is brought to the farm by the pickup truck (we have to go pretty slow). There, the wagon is parked next to the elevator. The popcorn is dropped onto the base of the elevator which brings it to the top of a drying bin.
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The tractor is the farmer's "work horse". What makes it even more useful than you realize is the PTO (power take off) attachment. In this case, the tractor PTO drives the wagon's self-unloading apparatus. That's a track at the bottom of the wagon which moves the corn to the exit opening. (More about that on the next page.)
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