Harvesting

Yesterday they started harvesting the corn.  I have to say that I am completely fascinated by the machines and by the process.  They started late in the day yesterday and worked until after 10:00 at night in the field across the road.  Today they're in the field surrounding our property.

 

Those are views from the front yard as they went by the first time with the harvester.  The front of the harvester reminds me of an electric hair trimmer.  I find it amazing that the machine can cut off the cornstalks, suck them up, remove the corn from the ears, separating it so perfectly.  In the end it's yellow, yellow corn piled up in the machine, then moved into another machine pulled by a tractor and finally shot into a semi waiting on the road.

That corn is so, so yellow.

Those were taken from the balcony looking behind the house.  And finally, I took a couple from my bedroom window, too.

The process is messy and loud.  Those machines and trucks are polluting for hours.  Really observing the corn itself, I wonder how efficient it is to grow something that takes so much space but that yields so little.  Each stalk I saw had one ear of corn, maybe, if it was lucky, two.  And I know that commercial corn growing on this scale is one of the evils undermining the environment (genetic modification, pesticides and fertilizers, etc.), but I still enjoyed seeing the corn growing all around us and delighted in the harvest.