Midnight in the Corn Field

Well, it wasn't quite midnight, but it was past my bedtime.   And more importantly, it was long past time to get the corn out of the field, on to a truck and sold so we could get a check in hand.  Best case scenario, we would have been done in November.  Too many things worked against the harvest this year, mostly the weather. Tonight it was finally cold enough and dry enough to give it a go.
Here's what I have learned about growing and harvesting corn in my short four years on this farm.  It's risky, expensive and totally stresses my husband to the edge of his sanity.  It has to have a certain moisture content to sell to Scoular's. Dairies will buy it with higher moisture, but they won't buy it all at once, yada, yada, yada.  The field has to be dry enough that the heavy combine doesn't get stuck and you have to line up trucks and drivers to haul it off.  The seed is expensive and it seems we are booking and buying corn for the next season before the current harvest is out of the field.  You have to fertilize it more and water it more than the other crops we grow. The birds eat it. The deer eat it.  The raccoons eat it.  The skunks eat it.  The Africans visiting neighbors down the road eat it.  Yet, Boyd still plants it.

This is the view from inside the combine.

Loading it into the truck.

The combine.

The field at night.  You can see that the corn in the foreground is cut.

Watching it load.

Blurry, but cool looking.

Cranking the cover over the truck.

The stuff that gets left behind.

Good night!  Pray for moisture test results under 15%, a high yield and a jump in the price tomorrow.