On Harvest and Sunsets (images linked within)
Posted: 2010.07.06 (18:58)
Those of you that have been around long enough, and have a good enough memory, already know that my family farms. For the newer members, now you know. Anyway, we farm wheat, and in central Kansas, the wheat harvest is in late June. So harvest got over a week ago for me, and I finally finished editing the compendium of pictures from it.
Description and text stuff (You can skip this if you just want to look at pretty pictures)
My job in our little family operation is to run the tractor/grain cart around, moving wheat from the combine to our trucks. Since the actual cutting part is only done by the combine, we try to keep the combine rolling at all times. To do this, I'll wait for my dad (who operates the combine most of the time) to get to a mildly straight/flat area where I can pull up next to him. He'll extend the combine auger over the grain cart and start unloading while still cutting, and for the next 3 minutes we try to maintain the same speed and direction (which, juggling a camera at the same time is not easy, so I don't have many good pictures of the process). On some of the weirder slopes and terraces, we'll be running side-by-side with my wheels about 2 feet from the combine platform. From there, I take the wheat in the grain cart over to our trucks, unload on the trucks, and repeat. Once the truck is full, our truck driver takes the load to the elevator. If the wheat is good, we'll fill about 10 truck loads a day, each load holding 24,000+ pounds of wheat, so we'll cut about a quarter million pounds (120+ tons) of wheat on a good day. And our operation is considered small by most standards.
Now for a tiny rant of mine:
The average price/bushel of wheat has only doubled in the last 100 years. In fact it is actually currently down a little from the price it was in the 70s. Farmers have been screwed by the markets for the last several decades. At this point, this is more of a hobby than anything else, and contributes about jack squat to my family's income. (It is hard to make a profit when wheat is $3.50 a bushel when we still go through $200 of fuel a day during harvest. Chemical sprays for weeds cost on the order of hundreds per gallon, it costs over $1k to spray a field for weeds. Fertilizer is similar price-rape.)
I'll answer any questions you have about the process. Assuming I haven't bored you all out of your mind.
On to the images!
Harvest gallery.
There are some images from last year in there, and I have no idea how ImageShack picked that particular ordering, but there isn't anything particularly wrong with last years images, so I consider them bonuses.
A selection of my favorites:
Me. --^
This is the part where I try to take a decent picture of the sunset... a few hundred times over. I took over 700 photos in 6 days.
Now for panoramics that I don't have thumbnails of! ImageShack apparently doesn't generate thumbnails for massive images. Just click the links (forewarning: a few are nearly 10 MB). On the giant ones, the effect is best if you open the 'Direct Link' URL on the right side of the linked page, use CTRL -/+ to size the image so it fills your browser vertically, and then scroll left and right.
This is hardly a panoramic (only 2 images stitched), but it is the best image of me doing my job I could put together. http://img809.imageshack.us/i/somepano.jpg/
360 view of a field.
Another 360, different field.
Dinner is delivered! I like the clouds in this
This is by far my favorite sunset pic, if you only look at one image in this post, make it this one. The color is awesome.
Another 360, with a sunset this time
Panoramic of the 4th image in the sunset row above, I love the silhouette
I of course have the originals for all of these. If you want any of them for some reason (stalking me, want to make a post card, want to do a better job of making a panoramic than me (actually if anyone wants to do that, I'm all for it)), I'll get you the originals.
Description and text stuff (You can skip this if you just want to look at pretty pictures)
My job in our little family operation is to run the tractor/grain cart around, moving wheat from the combine to our trucks. Since the actual cutting part is only done by the combine, we try to keep the combine rolling at all times. To do this, I'll wait for my dad (who operates the combine most of the time) to get to a mildly straight/flat area where I can pull up next to him. He'll extend the combine auger over the grain cart and start unloading while still cutting, and for the next 3 minutes we try to maintain the same speed and direction (which, juggling a camera at the same time is not easy, so I don't have many good pictures of the process). On some of the weirder slopes and terraces, we'll be running side-by-side with my wheels about 2 feet from the combine platform. From there, I take the wheat in the grain cart over to our trucks, unload on the trucks, and repeat. Once the truck is full, our truck driver takes the load to the elevator. If the wheat is good, we'll fill about 10 truck loads a day, each load holding 24,000+ pounds of wheat, so we'll cut about a quarter million pounds (120+ tons) of wheat on a good day. And our operation is considered small by most standards.
Now for a tiny rant of mine:
The average price/bushel of wheat has only doubled in the last 100 years. In fact it is actually currently down a little from the price it was in the 70s. Farmers have been screwed by the markets for the last several decades. At this point, this is more of a hobby than anything else, and contributes about jack squat to my family's income. (It is hard to make a profit when wheat is $3.50 a bushel when we still go through $200 of fuel a day during harvest. Chemical sprays for weeds cost on the order of hundreds per gallon, it costs over $1k to spray a field for weeds. Fertilizer is similar price-rape.)
I'll answer any questions you have about the process. Assuming I haven't bored you all out of your mind.
On to the images!
Harvest gallery.
There are some images from last year in there, and I have no idea how ImageShack picked that particular ordering, but there isn't anything particularly wrong with last years images, so I consider them bonuses.
A selection of my favorites:
Me. --^
This is the part where I try to take a decent picture of the sunset... a few hundred times over. I took over 700 photos in 6 days.
Now for panoramics that I don't have thumbnails of! ImageShack apparently doesn't generate thumbnails for massive images. Just click the links (forewarning: a few are nearly 10 MB). On the giant ones, the effect is best if you open the 'Direct Link' URL on the right side of the linked page, use CTRL -/+ to size the image so it fills your browser vertically, and then scroll left and right.
This is hardly a panoramic (only 2 images stitched), but it is the best image of me doing my job I could put together. http://img809.imageshack.us/i/somepano.jpg/
360 view of a field.
Another 360, different field.
Dinner is delivered! I like the clouds in this
This is by far my favorite sunset pic, if you only look at one image in this post, make it this one. The color is awesome.
Another 360, with a sunset this time
Panoramic of the 4th image in the sunset row above, I love the silhouette
I of course have the originals for all of these. If you want any of them for some reason (stalking me, want to make a post card, want to do a better job of making a panoramic than me (actually if anyone wants to do that, I'm all for it)), I'll get you the originals.