Yesterday and the day before (October 11 and 12) I had the back-to-roots glorious experience of being in the midst of corn harvest. The video (below) is from yesterday. The vantage point is Gunderland, the farmstead between Rolfe and Pocahontas where I was raised.*
In the first 2 1/2 minutes of the video, the John Deere combine and tractor move at a snail’s pace along the horizon. During that portion they look like a slow-moving dot.** They still look like a dot when the combine dumps corn on-the-go into the moving grain cart out in the field. At about the 2 1/2-minute point, the tractor and combine separate.
Then the footage gets close-up and more interesting (i.e., worth waiting for). The grain gets hauled to Gunderland and dumped there into a holding wagon. An auger then maneuvers the grain upward to the top of the grain bin so it can be stored in that bin. Even though I grew up on a farm, I found it fascinating to watch this process, especially the mechanics of the machinery.
Update: I tried to repost the video with the first 90 seconds removed. Because, in the editing/exporting process, the video lost a lot of its clarity, I stuck with the longer/original version. If you want to do something else during the first minute or two until the tractor leaves the field and then watch the last four minutes, you’ll see the most illustrative portions.
*My mom (Marion Gunderson) and dad (Deane Gunderson) moved to this farm site in 1945. They had the existing home built in 1955-56 and moved in in early 1956 when I was a few months old.
**I took the video with my pocket-sized Canon ELPH, so zooming wasn’t a viable option.
(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)
Tags: corn harvest, Iowa harvest
Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter) 
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