Thank you for making great videos like this. I think its wonderful that people can see how such an important part of our lives work. I'm not going to lie when stuck your foot down by that center sump to kick some grain my heart skipped a beat.
I love farming as it is an honest living. Thanks to my disability I'm not able to farm so I did the next best thing. I bought a house on 2 acres surrounded by farm fields so now I can sit on my deck and watch others working their fields. Every now and then I'm asked to bring out our compact tractor and help prep the fields by pulling the fine drag so that the farmer can come right behind me with the planter. So watching your videos is just like everyday life here at home.
Tim thanks so much for sharing i just love watching all the activities on the farm. I think that scripture is very fitting for you and your channel as much as I have seen you help people and neighbors in need or just doing goods for them like plowing there driveways along with other things you do for them. You are a great steward and a wonderful witness. Hope you have a great weekend. God Bless!!!
I remember shoveling out the corn crib (on the cob, but husked) to fill the smaller gravity boxes back in the mid 70's on the farm across the road. Very interesting to see this, thank you!!
Great(?) memories! Thanks for sharing! The world would be a different place if every kid were required to go clean a grain bin (especially beans or oats!) a few times while they were growing up!
Good to see that guard on the sweep. A good friend of mine got his pants leg caught in the sweep slammed him on the floor and ripped his calf muscles off and he almost bled to death. By the grace of God he survived and is doing well three years later.
First video of yours I've seen, you explain things well and hit on areas people might not know about. Think you've got another subscriber. Keep up the good work.
Tim and Christy I know you know this but I would like to state for the other viewers that dent corn aside from corn chips and tortillas is used in ethanol, plastic products, sweetener in many of the wonderful foods we enjoy, cooking starch, as well as all of the diverse animal feeds out there from your household pet to cattle. Any product out there that has a corn ingredient comes from dent corn. Sweet corn is what we eat from the can and Cobb. God bless your family and all of our corn and grain farmers. Please keep up the good work of feeding our nation. Thank you for the great videos.
Now we just need Tim driving the semi!!! We just filled the 3,300 bushel bin tonight. Hope your family has a good harvest ours is under way and yielding well.
It's fun to see you out on your family's farms. It's probably so natural to you but for me, being from Seattle, it's a fascinating world I have never really seen before. Sure there are a few dairy farms and apple orchards around if I look hard enough but for the most part it's either city, suburbs, or forest around here so you don't see things like big farms or corn.
Thanks Jeff. That is why we do these videos. What we see as 'normal', others have never experienced. We think this type of communication can help "city folks" relate to the farm just a bit more. We simply cannot live by the same OSHA type safety rules and crazy tight regulations on the farm. We would not be able to get anything done. Hopefully folks can begin to grasp this from seeing ordinary farm life.
That brings back a lot of memories for me , I was born in 73 and probably starting at age 4 or five I would help my dad clean out the bins , at least I think I was helping him ! Ha maybe more playing in the corn away from the auger !!
I retired from a co op that had 1,000,000 bushel capacity on one side of the road and 330,000 bushel on the other side but we only had sweeps on two 206000 bushel bins and there was only two of us plus one summer help for all of it but it doesn't matter how many helpers you have its a lot of work. Well I guess it does but its still lot of work.
Tim, what is the function of the slots on the floor and how in the world do you clean that out? FYI, I reviewed all of the other questions/comments to make sure I didn’t ask a redundant one. I appreciate the time you all put into your channel and I now review comments to make sure you haven’t already answered my question. Thanks again bud for your videos and I always smile when I get notified that you have uploaded a new video. May god continue to bless you and your entire family.
Great question Benny. I should have discussed in the video, but forgot. There is a fan outside which blows air up through those slots and through all of the grain in the bin. This dries and cools the grain so that it can be stored for longer periods. They CAN apply heat to this air to dry the corn a bit more. That is the reason for the propane tank near the bins. Does that explain it?
I remember these days back when I was growing up. My brother and I spent more than a few days in the bins shoveling corn. About as fun as knocking the land plaster off the walls of the spreader while it was moving...
We used to do ear corn and grind it for feed to the dairy and feeder cattle. It was all right until the corn got down below the feeder to the grinder. Then you had to scoop it. Are grinder was a 550 bushel grinder. We ground two loads of corn a day every other day on average. And in the winter time it was cold because for those of you that don't know that ear corn is stored in an open bin or it will mold.
Won't be long before they fill them back up , we sold the last of our corn in August ,Sould have in June but, that's water under the bridge. corn up here in Michigan is 26 to 32 % hand shelled right now were going to start Oct.1 we dry corn up here happy if under 25% then we go.keep us posted on harvest down there, enjoy watching that southern corn come off dry out of the fields.
They started harvest a couple of days ago. I'm assuming it is 16% or so. We used to dry it from 25%, but now there are better 'earlier' hybrids (likely bred for you guys :-) ) which have better "dry-down", so most years, we do not need to dry very much. This is a good thing, because our drying equipment is SLOW.
neither of my paps sheelled any corn, except for the chickens, and it seemed that was my job, when i would stay the weekend, or thru the summers, and i usually got a finger stuck in there sometimes.lol. all his corn was done whole ears, my one pap done that all by hand back then, corn shucking he called it, used a thing u put on ur hand, boy i wish i would of bought them at his sale that day, as i sat with him many a day doing it. thanks again. and yelp i love my new gator-the AKA-Cadillac. -:)
I've seen them use the 'hook' on the hand for shucking corn. We shucked some by hand one winter when it was too wet to get out with the combine. ...memories!
Yep cleaning bins up north in late summer even in a place like Indiana where it's maybe 80-90 degrees isn't much fun-- doing it down south where temps are in the high 90's to about 100 would be brutal. No air circulation inside and it's essentially a huge tin can sitting in the sun. Gets positively STIFLING HOT inside... I know I GREATLY prefer harvest in Indiana in October when it's anywhere from the 30's to the low 80's most days to Texas harvest in July when it's 96-100 degrees plus! Did that too many years... Later! OL J R :)
Aways like your videos,I may not comment all the time but I watch them . Some grows use leaf blowers not brooms and we call them Redskins not bees wings as long as I can remember keep your videos coming 👍
you said these high unloading augers are unusual these days, maybe in your region but in WI for example at how farms work they built two bins with these unloading augers in the last 3 years so maybe in some regions they still seem to be used. just a little extra from my side ;)
Yeah sounds like grain sorghum... back in the 70's we'd start combining about 8 am soon as the dew lifted. For an hour before that we were servicing the combine-- greasing and my job, the one I hated, pumping gasoline into the combine's fuel tank-- about 50 gallons worth for the day, all with one of those "bung pumps" by hand out of a fuel barrel. Most days in mid-July when you harvest grain sorghum and corn down here it'd be about 90 degrees by 7am. With the humidity from the dew coming off, you'd sweat through your shirt before you even got off the porch most days. You stayed soaking wet all day from sweat. Grain sorghum back then got what was called "downy mildew" that grew on the stalk right under the head of grain at the top. When you combined the grain, the sickle on the header and the bats on the reel would whop this dust loose from the heads and send it wafting straight up toward the combine. More of this dust came pouring down the feederhouse from the threshing cylinder and out over the header auger, and the bats on the reel would waft it right up towards you. The combine of course threshed all this dust off with the grain, and it poured out the back of the combine in a huge cloud that either followed you as it slowly dissipated, or blew back towards you. Best you could hope for was that there was a breeze that was blowing ACROSS the field and rows you were combining, to carry the dust sideways away from you. Most of the time however there wasn't. By 9 am usually it was in the mid 90's and just got hotter throughout the day, usually brushing up against 100 by the late afternoon or just over 100 degrees. You'd be coated in this dust which would mix with the sweat and salt on your skin and make this greasy scum that just itched like crazy... just like jumping into a vat of itching powder and flailing around in it... You were just miserable all day. Lunchtime you could grab a towel and turn the hose on and get it sopping wet and wash as much off as possible, eat lunch, and then go right back to it. We'd combine pretty late until 9-10 pm when the dew usually fell and the moisture in the grain would rise and combining would get tough, then shut down for the night, go home, take a long cool shower, grab a bite, and go to bed to do it all again the next day... Fun, fun... NOT. When Carter's grain embargo against the Soviets in the late 70's collapsed the grain markets and led directly the farm crisis of the 80's, we quit farming sorghum for many years... it was practically worthless. So we grew all cotton til the early-mid 90's when the price of grain finally came back up and we started growing sorghum again for rotational purposes. Thank goodness by then they'd bred resistance to downy mildew into the grain, and then combining sorghum was about like picking cotton-- still some dust and you got a little dirty, and still hot and uncomfortable in the 95-100 degree or so heat, but at least you didn't itch like crazy anymore and it was tolerable... Later! OL J R :)
LOL would Dad buy hoppers, nope that'd cost a dollar. Boy do I know the feeling! My Dad was always, "never fix it right today for $10 bucks if you can jerry rig it for $5 with baling wire"... Nevermind the fact that it would almost inevitably blow up in your face when you needed it most and then cost $20 and twice as long to fix it again... Don't get me wrong there's a time and place for just jerry rigging it and keep going... got five acres to finish and the rain is coming and the part broke on a Saturday afternoon, yeah, you do some REAL creative "fixing" to finish up... BUT then it needs to be FIXED RIGHT. That's the part Dad never wanted to spend the time or money on... Later! OL J R :)
That's the way our sweep auger was lol no shield great film lost a friend years ago in a bend crawled in it while loading and got sucked to the bottom lots Of danger in them bends if yur not careful
I don't know if I would that the vertical unloading augers are fading out because and the new bins I see going up are all having them installed. Maybe it's just a regional thing
Yes, legs and pits are VERY expensive!!! Tons of upkeep expense too in addition to the installation and purchase expense... Augers are much cheaper, but not as convenient. These new belt elevators look really interesting. They advertise them on RFD-TV all the time. Most of the seed tenders now have belt conveyors instead of the old brush augers or cupped flighting augers for that very reason-- minimize cracking and scuffing grain for seed. For grain going to the elevator, so long as damage isn't TOO excessive it doesn't matter too much... Later! OL J R :)
This particular bin is filled from the bin beside it...which is a drying bin. So, all corn is dry (but hot) when it is put into the bin. The fan seen in The video can cool the corn
Rick Formerfarmer Makes sense, but I know even then it continues to dry. Our bins will go from 17% in the center to 12% at the edge. We stay constant and don't store for nearly a year.
A lot of "drying bins" have what's called a stirrator that hangs down on a beam up at the top ring of the bin. It's basically a pair of small augers about 2 inches in diameter or so than hang down below an electric motor and drive system that can crawl back and forth extremely slowly up and down the beam, from the center of the bin to the outside wall. The beam also runs on a round track around the circumference of the bin all the way around at the top, so it ever so slowly moves around the bin like the hands of a clock, and back and forth from the center to the walls... SO, when it's running, the augers are spinning and pulling up corn from the bottom of the bin and throwing it out on top, allowing the corn in the bin to be "turned over" while the blower/dryer is running outside the bin blowing hot air up through the floor of the bin and through the corn. The augers extend down to about a foot off the floor, usually. This mixes MOST of the corn in the bin as it dries, and keeps all but the corn on the floor below the augers from getting TOO dry, while the corn on top without the stirrators running would still be too wet and would crust over or mold which is bad news... Usually the stirrators are run until the corn is dry, and then shut down... unless of course the farmer is using a "wet corn bin" and "dry corn bin" or storage bins setup, where he dries the corn in the bin, then augers the dry corn into a dry storage bin, and refills the wet bin and repeats the process until all the bins are full... That's where a dryer setup is much nicer... a stationary grain dryer, either a "batch dryer" that's filled with corn and hot air blown through it til it's dry, then it's emptied out into a bin and refilled with wet corn and the cycle repeats, or a "continuous flow" dryer that slowly feeds in wet corn at the top, which flows down through the dryer and comes out the bottom as dry hot corn, which is then augered to the bin and cooled... Most farmers and elevators running such setups have a 'wet corn' bin trucks and wagons dump into as they harvest, and which feeds the dryer, either slowly continuously or in batches. Dry corn then goes into the storage bins with the fans running to cool the corn down, since hot corn continues to give off moisture til it cools down and would get damp and mold without sufficient airflow to cool and continue drying it... Later! OL J R :)
Not sure about this one but the sweeper in our bin as it got down near the floor it moved around the bin. You be shoveling and have to watch out or get whacked in the shins. Like a freaky game, shovel shovel hop, repeat.🤣🌽
Moving the unloading auger because there was only one to share between multiple bins. How sharp that flighting would get. You learn quick why there were gloves in the summer.
Tim other farms just have the one bin for loading trucks and augers at the top of the bins that transfer the crop to the truck loading bin and they put one auger up to the bin that the certain crop goes to it reduces the fuel cost of the year just by having the electric transfer system a few years ago my brothers father in law had a bin malfunction in the middle of winter where half the bin of soybeans went bad and had to re dry the other half in -4 F to -13 F weather and the half of the bin that was salvaged half of that was my brothers sister in laws bean crop
It would be the same consistency (kernels are hard),. However, popping corn has been bred to have smaller kernels and better ‘popping’. So, no, this is not popcorn. Some folks nearby have raised lots of popcorn. ...and near my house in Indiana is where a huge amount of popcorn is raised.
No, that's plain old "yellow dent" #2 corn or "field corn". Popcorn is bred differently to have a much thicker pericarp (the outer shell that holds the kernel together) and popcorn kernels are round, not flat like field corn. Popcorn looks different in the field because the stalks are somewhat shorter than field corn, and the tassels are often very widely "splayed" or more showy, almost look like a golden firework popped open at the top of the plants. The silks of the ears are often either a vibrant red or almost white, depending on the variety, compared with the more subtle greenish-yellow of silks on field corn. Of course they all get darker as they pollinate and then turn completely brown and dry out. Popcorn typically has a white cob (versus a red cob for field corn) and the cob and ear is much smaller, and of course the kernels are smaller, and all round. Field corn only has round kernels near the tip of the ear, and some around the shank or butt of the ear right at the bottom. Popcorn is bred so that the pericarp is thicker, and the starch inside never totally dries out-- a little moist starch remains in the center of the kernel, and when the popcorn is heated up, eventually the moisture in the starch begins to turn to steam, which cooks the starch and increases the pressure inside the kernel, until it finally "explodes" and as the steam escapes from the kernel as it blows apart it inflates the starch and turns the kernel inside out, which is what makes popcorn "pop" and the strange shapes of the starch as it expands turning inside out. What remains of the ruptured pericarp is the hard part of the popcorn inside that typically gets stuck in your teeth LOL:) The other type of corn is "Sweet corn" which is grown for, of course, fresh corn to eat, either "corn on the cob" or canned or frozen niblet corn. The stalks of sweet corn are much shorter than field corn, typically, and it will also have a rather showy tassel typically either lighter in color than field corn or even with a reddish hue. Similarly the silks on the ears will be reddish or whitish compared to field corn. Typically sweet corn is shorter than popcorn. Sweet corn is harvested while the plants are still green and the kernels are still soft and wet inside, (called "milk stage" because if you pop a kernel it will be full of a milky looking sweet fluid, the plant sugars, which will turn into starch as the corn matures). Field corn also goes through a milk stage and can be eaten as corn on the cob but it's much less sweet and gets tough and doughy or chewy MUCH faster and isn't anywhere near as good to eat. Sweet corn that's left in the field too long will get big fat kernels that get tough, chewy, and doughy and if allowed to fully ripen will eventually dry down into wrinkly seeds as the corn dries down and the water leaves the kernels. All the other corn types other than sweet corn are allowed to mature and ripen in the field for highest yields, and to allow most of the moisture to naturally leave the kernels before it's harvested, to the greatest extent possible (corn needs to be at 15% moisture or thereabouts to store safely without heating up or molding from bacterial or fungal activity, which can ruin the grain). Running grain dryers, fired typically by propane, is quite expensive, so depending on the region of the country it depends at what moisture harvest typically occurs, usually it's desirable to harvest after the grain has dried to 20% moisture or below, but depending on the year that may not be possible, and sometimes corn must be harvested at 22-25% moisture and dried down with hot air to 15% or thereabouts in the bin or in a batch or continuous flow grain dryer. That gets VERY expensive the wetter the grain is coming out of the field from the combine! Once dried the corn can store essentially "indefinitely" and be used or sold whenever desired. Most field corn is used for industrial purposes-- either to make high fructose corn syrup or ethanol, and a large portion is used to feed livestock, along with the byproducts of ethanol production (grain leftovers called "distiller's grains" after the ethanol has been produced). Some is crushed for corn oil and the remains sold as "cattle cake" or livestock feed. Specialty corns, like waxy corn or high-oil corn, are used to produce larger amounts of corn oil when crushed in an oil press. Most "food grade" corn is called "white corn" and is similar to yellow corn in appearance in the field, but the kernels are white and the cobs are white as well (bees wings are white, unlike field corn with red cobs the bees wings are red, because that's the fluffy "outer layer" of the cob, some of which comes off with the kernels in the combine and goes through the cleaning shoe of the combine and ends up in the grain tank with the threshed corn). White corn is typically the kind most often used to make corn chips, corn cereals, corn meal, corn starch, and other types of corn foods like tortillas, as yellow corn can leave more spots and color variations because of the yellow pericarp on the seeds, which is white like the starch inside in white corn. There are also color variations like blue corn which is also now used in some food products like blue corn chips and stuff like that. It's bred from various colors found on "Indian corn" and selected through selective breeding programs and the trait is bred into commercial corn varieties. Another type of corn that's seen in certain parts of the country is *seed corn*. It is grown to produce seeds that farmers buy from the companies to plant their fields. Seed corn is a hybrid that is produced in a unique way. Since corn plants have the male and female parts of the plant separated (unlike flowering plants like soybeans and cotton where the flowers contain both the male anthers producing pollen and the female pistil or stamen that receives the pollen and carries it to the ova or eggs that become seeds in the pod or boll or fruit) corn has it's male tassel at the top of the plant shedding pollen and the female parts are the silks on the ears, which receive pollen and carry it down their length to the individual ovum on the cob to fertilize the germ and then form a kernel-- if the ovum doesn't pollinate (due to extreme heat for instance) the kernel will not grow and produce a seed. Since the flowering parts are separated, hybrid seed corn is produced by planting a female variety, typically in four row increments, skipping a row in between. Later a special planter that has gaps for the four female rows and widely spaced male row planter units will come across the field again and plant the male rows. (Sometimes the male rows are planted first, depending on their maturity, so they and the female rows flower together). When the field starts to approach silking, the female rows will be detassled, having their tassels and usually the top part of the plant removed by wheels, high mounted mowers carried by high-boy detassler machines, or by hand (or sometimes all three, depending on how many times the crop is detassled to make sure NONE of the female rows tassel and thus self-pollinate. With the female rows detassled, only the female silks on the ears remain. They are pollinated by the male rows tassels which remain untassled and intact. The pollen drifts across the two rows of female plants on either side of each male row. Once the female row ear silks are all pollinated, the male rows are then chopped down, so that their self-pollinated female silks and ears are not harvested to contaminate the hybrid seed. So near harvest a seed corn field will typically have four rows of short, topped plants with a skip row gap where the male row was chopped down and destroyed. Seed corn is typically harvested as whole ear corn by large corn pickers with husking beds (which pull most of the husks off the ears) pulling dump carts behind, usually dumping into dump carts that carry the ear corn to the waiting belt-floor semi trucks that haul the corn to the seed company, which then stores it in their own bins and handles and dries it accordingly to preserve the maximum germination of the seed for next years crop. Later they run it through shellers that separate the kernels from the cobs more gently than a combine can so there is as little damage to the seeds as possible, and then they clean it, sort it, grade it, and package it in bulk, tote bins that can feed seed tenders for large farmers, and 80,000 kernel bags for smaller farmers. Later! OL J R :)
Pardon my ignorance , but isn’t it kinda of non efficient labor to keep shoveling the corn back into the other side. My thought process would be to wait till the pile was done and then shovel and broom into auger
I disagree let the sweep do its job and wait till the end to sweep up and also very dangerous to be in bin with sweep running all grain bin manufactures state not to enter bin when sweep is running
Tractor Time with Tim we’ve done it both ways and it is easier to do it as it’s running and usually we have to push the sweep around to cause it won’t go by itself
Thank you for making great videos like this. I think its wonderful that people can see how such an important part of our lives work. I'm not going to lie when stuck your foot down by that center sump to kick some grain my heart skipped a beat.
I love farming as it is an honest living. Thanks to my disability I'm not able to farm so I did the next best thing. I bought a house on 2 acres surrounded by farm fields so now I can sit on my deck and watch others working their fields. Every now and then I'm asked to bring out our compact tractor and help prep the fields by pulling the fine drag so that the farmer can come right behind me with the planter. So watching your videos is just like everyday life here at home.
Tim thanks so much for sharing i just love watching all the activities on the farm. I think that scripture is very fitting for you and your channel as much as I have seen you help people and neighbors in need or just doing goods for them like plowing there driveways along with other things you do for them. You are a great steward and a wonderful witness. Hope you have a great weekend. God Bless!!!
Thanks for all of the encouraging comments!
I remember shoveling out the corn crib (on the cob, but husked) to fill the smaller gravity boxes back in the mid 70's on the farm across the road. Very interesting to see this, thank you!!
Thanks Duke!
I always wondered how they worked, now I know. Thanks for the tour Tim and Christy.
Great(?) memories! Thanks for sharing! The world would be a different place if every kid were required to go clean a grain bin (especially beans or oats!) a few times while they were growing up!
Good to see that guard on the sweep. A good friend of mine got his pants leg caught in the sweep slammed him on the floor and ripped his calf muscles off and he almost bled to death. By the grace of God he survived and is doing well three years later.
Well, it really isn’t there for ‘guard’ purposes. It is there to force the corn into the auger.
Better there than not... augers are nothing to fool around with... Lots of guys have lost limbs or their life to augers.
Later! OL J R :)
First video of yours I've seen, you explain things well and hit on areas people might not know about. Think you've got another subscriber. Keep up the good work.
Welcome to our channel. Thanks for subscribing!
This farming stuff is very interesting... I really like it when harvesting time comes around... don't get me wrong...we love"TRACTOR TIME WITH TIM"...
Tim and Christy I know you know this but I would like to state for the other viewers that dent corn aside from corn chips and tortillas is used in ethanol, plastic products, sweetener in many of the wonderful foods we enjoy, cooking starch, as well as all of the diverse animal feeds out there from your household pet to cattle. Any product out there that has a corn ingredient comes from dent corn. Sweet corn is what we eat from the can and Cobb. God bless your family and all of our corn and grain farmers. Please keep up the good work of feeding our nation. Thank you for the great videos.
Thanks for your comment, Daniel!
Great job Tim and Christie, I never saw a broom or shovel jump into your hand once. I love when you go back to the farm.
Nope! Avoided it completely. Randall said I am just likely a blister. Annoyingly shows up just when the work is done!
Now we just need Tim driving the semi!!! We just filled the 3,300 bushel bin tonight. Hope your family has a good harvest ours is under way and yielding well.
I used to do so...way back before CDL days.
Don't need a CDL with farm plates... if the truck is plated commercial you do.
later! OL J R :)
Makes me long for summer ;) Watching from Iowa at -9 degrees F (Actual air temp...windchill is way worse, as you know)
It's fun to see you out on your family's farms. It's probably so natural to you but for me, being from Seattle, it's a fascinating world I have never really seen before. Sure there are a few dairy farms and apple orchards around if I look hard enough but for the most part it's either city, suburbs, or forest around here so you don't see things like big farms or corn.
Thanks Jeff. That is why we do these videos. What we see as 'normal', others have never experienced.
We think this type of communication can help "city folks" relate to the farm just a bit more. We simply cannot live by the same OSHA type safety rules and crazy tight regulations on the farm. We would not be able to get anything done.
Hopefully folks can begin to grasp this from seeing ordinary farm life.
Love you guys, may God bless you and your family.
Thanks! May God Bless you as well!
That brings back a lot of memories for me , I was born in 73 and probably starting at age 4 or five I would help my dad clean out the bins , at least I think I was helping him ! Ha maybe more playing in the corn away from the auger !!
Good video I just learned something new on how you all unload the grain bins keep up with the great videos.
Thanks for watching, Robert!
Love it, just love the farm videos, so much to know. Great video as usual.
Excellent job really enjoy the farm/crop videos keep em coming thanks
I had never seen the inside of a grain bin before - thanks for showing.
i worked in a Grain Bin 3 times bigger than that here in Brazil, soy sessions and corn sessions. I miss all of those days.
They did a great job my buddy did this last week and has started to put corn back in them ! LOL have a great weekend ! Kioti Curt ! :-)
I have seen them clean out and add new corn the same day!
I retired from a co op that had 1,000,000 bushel capacity on one side of the road and 330,000 bushel on the other side but we only had sweeps on two 206000 bushel bins and there was only two of us plus one summer help for all of it but it doesn't matter how many helpers you have its a lot of work. Well I guess it does but its still lot of work.
Well done Tim!
Tim Christi we learned a lot just never new how they unload a been
God Bless
PaK
Tim, what is the function of the slots on the floor and how in the world do you clean that out? FYI, I reviewed all of the other questions/comments to make sure I didn’t ask a redundant one. I appreciate the time you all put into your channel and I now review comments to make sure you haven’t already answered my question. Thanks again bud for your videos and I always smile when I get notified that you have uploaded a new video. May god continue to bless you and your entire family.
Great question Benny. I should have discussed in the video, but forgot.
There is a fan outside which blows air up through those slots and through all of the grain in the bin. This dries and cools the grain so that it can be stored for longer periods.
They CAN apply heat to this air to dry the corn a bit more. That is the reason for the propane tank near the bins.
Does that explain it?
Oh I get it now. Thanks for answering.
I’ve never seen that before, but always wondered. thanks for sharing the process. 😄
Wow! We need to get you participating in this sometime!
Amy, we should have had one ready to clean out when you and Matt were here for the wedding. Bummer!
I remember these days back when I was growing up. My brother and I spent more than a few days in the bins shoveling corn. About as fun as knocking the land plaster off the walls of the spreader while it was moving...
We used to do ear corn and grind it for feed to the dairy and feeder cattle. It was all right until the corn got down below the feeder to the grinder. Then you had to scoop it. Are grinder was a 550 bushel grinder. We ground two loads of corn a day every other day on average. And in the winter time it was cold because for those of you that don't know that ear corn is stored in an open bin or it will mold.
Won't be long before they fill them back up , we sold the last of our corn in August ,Sould have in June but, that's water under the bridge. corn up here in Michigan is 26 to 32 % hand shelled right now were going to start Oct.1 we dry corn up here happy if under 25% then we go.keep us posted on harvest down there, enjoy watching that southern corn come off dry out of the fields.
They started harvest a couple of days ago. I'm assuming it is 16% or so. We used to dry it from 25%, but now there are better 'earlier' hybrids (likely bred for you guys :-) ) which have better "dry-down", so most years, we do not need to dry very much.
This is a good thing, because our drying equipment is SLOW.
Propane is NOT cheap anymore like it used to be...
Later! OL J R :)
Holy that's a lot of information for an equipment operator to asorb , I think Johnny and a broom would put 3 guys out of a job, Thanks for sharing
Ah, come on, it wasn't THAT much. Your mind needs a challenge once in awhile :-)
Nice video Tim and Christy
neither of my paps sheelled any corn, except for the chickens, and it seemed that was my job, when i would stay the weekend, or thru the summers, and i usually got a finger stuck in there sometimes.lol. all his corn was done whole ears, my one pap done that all by hand back then, corn shucking he called it, used a thing u put on ur hand, boy i wish i would of bought them at his sale that day, as i sat with him many a day doing it. thanks again. and yelp i love my new gator-the AKA-Cadillac. -:)
I've seen them use the 'hook' on the hand for shucking corn. We shucked some by hand one winter when it was too wet to get out with the combine. ...memories!
Love the Farm!
Great video for those who may be unfamiliar with grain storage. The only problem is that it doesn’t look like it’s 120 degrees inside the bin!
It was hot. Not sure HOW hot, but it wasn’t pleasant in there!
I worked at a Purina feed mill and cleaned out corn bins, didn't really care for it. It was about 45 miles south of Tampa Fla, in the summer time
Yep cleaning bins up north in late summer even in a place like Indiana where it's maybe 80-90 degrees isn't much fun-- doing it down south where temps are in the high 90's to about 100 would be brutal. No air circulation inside and it's essentially a huge tin can sitting in the sun. Gets positively STIFLING HOT inside...
I know I GREATLY prefer harvest in Indiana in October when it's anywhere from the 30's to the low 80's most days to Texas harvest in July when it's 96-100 degrees plus! Did that too many years...
Later! OL J R :)
All the things I never saw when I was a kid... cool.
Aways like your videos,I may not comment all the time but I watch them . Some grows use leaf blowers not brooms and we call them Redskins not bees wings as long as I can remember keep your videos coming 👍
Thanks for watching, Sam!
Good video Tim God Bless
you said these high unloading augers are unusual these days, maybe in your region but in WI for example at how farms work they built two bins with these unloading augers in the last 3 years so maybe in some regions they still seem to be used. just a little extra from my side ;)
Yea, I suppose you are right. I was probably over-generalizing.
Very cool, Tim.
Cool video tim
Memories of my youth. Have you ever gotten into a bin to shovel barley? That itchy dust will make you learn new words...
“Red Top” is the worst. I worked 2 summers in a small seed company cleaning clover, fescue, soybeans, and red top.
Yeah sounds like grain sorghum... back in the 70's we'd start combining about 8 am soon as the dew lifted. For an hour before that we were servicing the combine-- greasing and my job, the one I hated, pumping gasoline into the combine's fuel tank-- about 50 gallons worth for the day, all with one of those "bung pumps" by hand out of a fuel barrel.
Most days in mid-July when you harvest grain sorghum and corn down here it'd be about 90 degrees by 7am. With the humidity from the dew coming off, you'd sweat through your shirt before you even got off the porch most days. You stayed soaking wet all day from sweat.
Grain sorghum back then got what was called "downy mildew" that grew on the stalk right under the head of grain at the top. When you combined the grain, the sickle on the header and the bats on the reel would whop this dust loose from the heads and send it wafting straight up toward the combine. More of this dust came pouring down the feederhouse from the threshing cylinder and out over the header auger, and the bats on the reel would waft it right up towards you. The combine of course threshed all this dust off with the grain, and it poured out the back of the combine in a huge cloud that either followed you as it slowly dissipated, or blew back towards you. Best you could hope for was that there was a breeze that was blowing ACROSS the field and rows you were combining, to carry the dust sideways away from you. Most of the time however there wasn't. By 9 am usually it was in the mid 90's and just got hotter throughout the day, usually brushing up against 100 by the late afternoon or just over 100 degrees. You'd be coated in this dust which would mix with the sweat and salt on your skin and make this greasy scum that just itched like crazy... just like jumping into a vat of itching powder and flailing around in it... You were just miserable all day. Lunchtime you could grab a towel and turn the hose on and get it sopping wet and wash as much off as possible, eat lunch, and then go right back to it. We'd combine pretty late until 9-10 pm when the dew usually fell and the moisture in the grain would rise and combining would get tough, then shut down for the night, go home, take a long cool shower, grab a bite, and go to bed to do it all again the next day...
Fun, fun... NOT. When Carter's grain embargo against the Soviets in the late 70's collapsed the grain markets and led directly the farm crisis of the 80's, we quit farming sorghum for many years... it was practically worthless. So we grew all cotton til the early-mid 90's when the price of grain finally came back up and we started growing sorghum again for rotational purposes. Thank goodness by then they'd bred resistance to downy mildew into the grain, and then combining sorghum was about like picking cotton-- still some dust and you got a little dirty, and still hot and uncomfortable in the 95-100 degree or so heat, but at least you didn't itch like crazy anymore and it was tolerable...
Later! OL J R :)
Another nasty one to stay away from was Mustard Seed, far more itchy than barley. Would dad buy hooper bins? Nooo, that would cost a dollar
LOL would Dad buy hoppers, nope that'd cost a dollar.
Boy do I know the feeling! My Dad was always, "never fix it right today for $10 bucks if you can jerry rig it for $5 with baling wire"... Nevermind the fact that it would almost inevitably blow up in your face when you needed it most and then cost $20 and twice as long to fix it again...
Don't get me wrong there's a time and place for just jerry rigging it and keep going... got five acres to finish and the rain is coming and the part broke on a Saturday afternoon, yeah, you do some REAL creative "fixing" to finish up... BUT then it needs to be FIXED RIGHT. That's the part Dad never wanted to spend the time or money on...
Later! OL J R :)
That's the way our sweep auger was lol no shield great film lost a friend years ago in a bend crawled in it while loading and got sucked to the bottom lots Of danger in them bends if yur not careful
Can you store grain on a small scale in any tin container as long as it's clean and protects the grain from the elements?
If dry…and kept at consistent temperature.
Changing temperature creates condensation…which will rot grain.
@@TractorTimewithTim So maybe not in Oklahoma lol thanks for the quick reply btw
Could you have Randall pick my lotto numbers being he is so good on estimating the bushels.
really enjoyed the video thanks and the religious verses
Thanks for Sharing!!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
I don't know if I would that the vertical unloading augers are fading out because and the new bins I see going up are all having them installed. Maybe it's just a regional thing
Vertical augers are not good for seed. We raise some seed beans. Vertical augers crack them pretty bad.
I would actually like to see short bucket elevators used to unload bins. They use them to load grain so why not unload into trucks
Folks that have grain legs (bucket elevators) can often use them to load outbound trucks.
My family has never invested in a Grain Leg.
Yes, legs and pits are VERY expensive!!! Tons of upkeep expense too in addition to the installation and purchase expense...
Augers are much cheaper, but not as convenient. These new belt elevators look really interesting. They advertise them on RFD-TV all the time. Most of the seed tenders now have belt conveyors instead of the old brush augers or cupped flighting augers for that very reason-- minimize cracking and scuffing grain for seed.
For grain going to the elevator, so long as damage isn't TOO excessive it doesn't matter too much...
Later! OL J R :)
So we raise livestock...if the sweep only works at the bottom, what keeps the moisture consistent while drying? Even our smaller feed silos clump up.
They likley dry it prior to putting in the bin, thats how we did it.
This particular bin is filled from the bin beside it...which is a drying bin. So, all corn is dry (but hot) when it is put into the bin. The fan seen in The video can cool the corn
Rick Formerfarmer Makes sense, but I know even then it continues to dry. Our bins will go from 17% in the center to 12% at the edge. We stay constant and don't store for nearly a year.
A lot of "drying bins" have what's called a stirrator that hangs down on a beam up at the top ring of the bin. It's basically a pair of small augers about 2 inches in diameter or so than hang down below an electric motor and drive system that can crawl back and forth extremely slowly up and down the beam, from the center of the bin to the outside wall. The beam also runs on a round track around the circumference of the bin all the way around at the top, so it ever so slowly moves around the bin like the hands of a clock, and back and forth from the center to the walls... SO, when it's running, the augers are spinning and pulling up corn from the bottom of the bin and throwing it out on top, allowing the corn in the bin to be "turned over" while the blower/dryer is running outside the bin blowing hot air up through the floor of the bin and through the corn. The augers extend down to about a foot off the floor, usually. This mixes MOST of the corn in the bin as it dries, and keeps all but the corn on the floor below the augers from getting TOO dry, while the corn on top without the stirrators running would still be too wet and would crust over or mold which is bad news...
Usually the stirrators are run until the corn is dry, and then shut down... unless of course the farmer is using a "wet corn bin" and "dry corn bin" or storage bins setup, where he dries the corn in the bin, then augers the dry corn into a dry storage bin, and refills the wet bin and repeats the process until all the bins are full...
That's where a dryer setup is much nicer... a stationary grain dryer, either a "batch dryer" that's filled with corn and hot air blown through it til it's dry, then it's emptied out into a bin and refilled with wet corn and the cycle repeats, or a "continuous flow" dryer that slowly feeds in wet corn at the top, which flows down through the dryer and comes out the bottom as dry hot corn, which is then augered to the bin and cooled... Most farmers and elevators running such setups have a 'wet corn' bin trucks and wagons dump into as they harvest, and which feeds the dryer, either slowly continuously or in batches. Dry corn then goes into the storage bins with the fans running to cool the corn down, since hot corn continues to give off moisture til it cools down and would get damp and mold without sufficient airflow to cool and continue drying it...
Later! OL J R :)
luke strawwalker Thanks for the info.
good job, thanks
Not sure about this one but the sweeper in our bin as it got down near the floor it moved around the bin. You be shoveling and have to watch out or get whacked in the shins. Like a freaky game, shovel shovel hop, repeat.🤣🌽
This one is geared slower...the drive wheel at the end moves slowly. But older ones we hold with a shovel to prevent going fast
We never had a dedicated auger in the bin . so we got to shovel even more.
very nice congratulations, I follow you,
Welcome! Thanks for the kind words!
Spent a lot of time in a grain bin. We had to move the auger from bin to bin, sweep and unloader.
Moving the unloading auger because there was only one to share between multiple bins. How sharp that flighting would get. You learn quick why there were gloves in the summer.
Great video!!! Where’s your dust mask? Lol
Tim other farms just have the one bin for loading trucks and augers at the top of the bins that transfer the crop to the truck loading bin and they put one auger up to the bin that the certain crop goes to it reduces the fuel cost of the year just by having the electric transfer system a few years ago my brothers father in law had a bin malfunction in the middle of winter where half the bin of soybeans went bad and had to re dry the other half in -4 F to -13 F weather and the half of the bin that was salvaged half of that was my brothers sister in laws bean crop
Oh man that's hurts sorry to hear it. Hope their beans were insured because that can be a HUGE financial hit.
Later! OL J R :)
I knew this guys face was familiar and then I read the channels name. What!! where's the tractor Tim? hahaha
So, how many of your machines do you suppose could fit in there?
Hmm. Never thought of that.
@@TractorTimewithTim
With a nice turntable mounted inside? One overhead door. Hmmmm, something to think about?
I have a confession. I watch way too much UA-cam.
There is no known cure to TTWT addiction, but the treatment is painless (just keep watching) :-)
@@TractorTimewithTim always love your channel. Great content. Great family. Just great.
Tem vaga ai pra min ai não
is that the same as popping corn ?
It would be the same consistency (kernels are hard),. However, popping corn has been bred to have smaller kernels and better ‘popping’.
So, no, this is not popcorn. Some folks nearby have raised lots of popcorn.
...and near my house in Indiana is where a huge amount of popcorn is raised.
No, that's plain old "yellow dent" #2 corn or "field corn". Popcorn is bred differently to have a much thicker pericarp (the outer shell that holds the kernel together) and popcorn kernels are round, not flat like field corn. Popcorn looks different in the field because the stalks are somewhat shorter than field corn, and the tassels are often very widely "splayed" or more showy, almost look like a golden firework popped open at the top of the plants. The silks of the ears are often either a vibrant red or almost white, depending on the variety, compared with the more subtle greenish-yellow of silks on field corn. Of course they all get darker as they pollinate and then turn completely brown and dry out. Popcorn typically has a white cob (versus a red cob for field corn) and the cob and ear is much smaller, and of course the kernels are smaller, and all round. Field corn only has round kernels near the tip of the ear, and some around the shank or butt of the ear right at the bottom. Popcorn is bred so that the pericarp is thicker, and the starch inside never totally dries out-- a little moist starch remains in the center of the kernel, and when the popcorn is heated up, eventually the moisture in the starch begins to turn to steam, which cooks the starch and increases the pressure inside the kernel, until it finally "explodes" and as the steam escapes from the kernel as it blows apart it inflates the starch and turns the kernel inside out, which is what makes popcorn "pop" and the strange shapes of the starch as it expands turning inside out. What remains of the ruptured pericarp is the hard part of the popcorn inside that typically gets stuck in your teeth LOL:)
The other type of corn is "Sweet corn" which is grown for, of course, fresh corn to eat, either "corn on the cob" or canned or frozen niblet corn. The stalks of sweet corn are much shorter than field corn, typically, and it will also have a rather showy tassel typically either lighter in color than field corn or even with a reddish hue. Similarly the silks on the ears will be reddish or whitish compared to field corn. Typically sweet corn is shorter than popcorn. Sweet corn is harvested while the plants are still green and the kernels are still soft and wet inside, (called "milk stage" because if you pop a kernel it will be full of a milky looking sweet fluid, the plant sugars, which will turn into starch as the corn matures). Field corn also goes through a milk stage and can be eaten as corn on the cob but it's much less sweet and gets tough and doughy or chewy MUCH faster and isn't anywhere near as good to eat. Sweet corn that's left in the field too long will get big fat kernels that get tough, chewy, and doughy and if allowed to fully ripen will eventually dry down into wrinkly seeds as the corn dries down and the water leaves the kernels. All the other corn types other than sweet corn are allowed to mature and ripen in the field for highest yields, and to allow most of the moisture to naturally leave the kernels before it's harvested, to the greatest extent possible (corn needs to be at 15% moisture or thereabouts to store safely without heating up or molding from bacterial or fungal activity, which can ruin the grain). Running grain dryers, fired typically by propane, is quite expensive, so depending on the region of the country it depends at what moisture harvest typically occurs, usually it's desirable to harvest after the grain has dried to 20% moisture or below, but depending on the year that may not be possible, and sometimes corn must be harvested at 22-25% moisture and dried down with hot air to 15% or thereabouts in the bin or in a batch or continuous flow grain dryer. That gets VERY expensive the wetter the grain is coming out of the field from the combine! Once dried the corn can store essentially "indefinitely" and be used or sold whenever desired.
Most field corn is used for industrial purposes-- either to make high fructose corn syrup or ethanol, and a large portion is used to feed livestock, along with the byproducts of ethanol production (grain leftovers called "distiller's grains" after the ethanol has been produced). Some is crushed for corn oil and the remains sold as "cattle cake" or livestock feed.
Specialty corns, like waxy corn or high-oil corn, are used to produce larger amounts of corn oil when crushed in an oil press.
Most "food grade" corn is called "white corn" and is similar to yellow corn in appearance in the field, but the kernels are white and the cobs are white as well (bees wings are white, unlike field corn with red cobs the bees wings are red, because that's the fluffy "outer layer" of the cob, some of which comes off with the kernels in the combine and goes through the cleaning shoe of the combine and ends up in the grain tank with the threshed corn). White corn is typically the kind most often used to make corn chips, corn cereals, corn meal, corn starch, and other types of corn foods like tortillas, as yellow corn can leave more spots and color variations because of the yellow pericarp on the seeds, which is white like the starch inside in white corn.
There are also color variations like blue corn which is also now used in some food products like blue corn chips and stuff like that. It's bred from various colors found on "Indian corn" and selected through selective breeding programs and the trait is bred into commercial corn varieties.
Another type of corn that's seen in certain parts of the country is *seed corn*. It is grown to produce seeds that farmers buy from the companies to plant their fields. Seed corn is a hybrid that is produced in a unique way. Since corn plants have the male and female parts of the plant separated (unlike flowering plants like soybeans and cotton where the flowers contain both the male anthers producing pollen and the female pistil or stamen that receives the pollen and carries it to the ova or eggs that become seeds in the pod or boll or fruit) corn has it's male tassel at the top of the plant shedding pollen and the female parts are the silks on the ears, which receive pollen and carry it down their length to the individual ovum on the cob to fertilize the germ and then form a kernel-- if the ovum doesn't pollinate (due to extreme heat for instance) the kernel will not grow and produce a seed. Since the flowering parts are separated, hybrid seed corn is produced by planting a female variety, typically in four row increments, skipping a row in between. Later a special planter that has gaps for the four female rows and widely spaced male row planter units will come across the field again and plant the male rows. (Sometimes the male rows are planted first, depending on their maturity, so they and the female rows flower together). When the field starts to approach silking, the female rows will be detassled, having their tassels and usually the top part of the plant removed by wheels, high mounted mowers carried by high-boy detassler machines, or by hand (or sometimes all three, depending on how many times the crop is detassled to make sure NONE of the female rows tassel and thus self-pollinate. With the female rows detassled, only the female silks on the ears remain. They are pollinated by the male rows tassels which remain untassled and intact. The pollen drifts across the two rows of female plants on either side of each male row. Once the female row ear silks are all pollinated, the male rows are then chopped down, so that their self-pollinated female silks and ears are not harvested to contaminate the hybrid seed. So near harvest a seed corn field will typically have four rows of short, topped plants with a skip row gap where the male row was chopped down and destroyed. Seed corn is typically harvested as whole ear corn by large corn pickers with husking beds (which pull most of the husks off the ears) pulling dump carts behind, usually dumping into dump carts that carry the ear corn to the waiting belt-floor semi trucks that haul the corn to the seed company, which then stores it in their own bins and handles and dries it accordingly to preserve the maximum germination of the seed for next years crop. Later they run it through shellers that separate the kernels from the cobs more gently than a combine can so there is as little damage to the seeds as possible, and then they clean it, sort it, grade it, and package it in bulk, tote bins that can feed seed tenders for large farmers, and 80,000 kernel bags for smaller farmers.
Later! OL J R :)
thanks ! my father always told me its a good day when you learn something new !
You're welcome! OL J R :)
I shoveled a bin out today cause we was having problems with the electrical box it definitely sucks
Ugh!
I see Clifford!
Yep. He was there...with Vinny!
Want to see a ( how to operate Johnny for beginners ) video.
I don't miss that any
Man i clean grain bins 3 times thw size of that by my self now im realising maybe i should have help lol
Pardon my ignorance , but isn’t it kinda of non efficient labor to keep shoveling the corn back into the other side. My thought process would be to wait till the pile was done and then shovel and broom into auger
It IS done behind the auger. They are only shoveling 1/2” or so of grain which the backing plate slides over the top of.
It is so much easier to clean up as the sweep is running versus waiting till it runs all the way around
I disagree let the sweep do its job and wait till the end to sweep up and also very dangerous to be in bin with sweep running all grain bin manufactures state not to enter bin when sweep is running
Whatever. You can come clean out our bins using your approach. Whatever way you want.
Tractor Time with Tim we’ve done it both ways and it is easier to do it as it’s running and usually we have to push the sweep around to cause it won’t go by itself
I know this all too much cause I work on the grain farm too a 10.0000 bushels is nothing that is considered the smallest one around
*Cries in 65,000 bushel bin*
I know this all too much cause I work on the grain farm too
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Soybean dust killed me